Stroszek
by Werner Herzog
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DVD details
Actor: Bruno S., Burkhard Driest, Clemens Scheitz, Eva Mattes, Wilhelm von HomburgDirector: Werner Herzog
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-01-08
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
DVD Reviews of Stroszek
DVD Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Strozek is undeniably slow at times, but it's so fascinatingly bleak in its depiction of middle America that the viewer can't help coming away impressed--throw in a couple of scenes that function perfectly as metaphors and linger in the brain (the perpetually dancing chicken, tiny baby with a vicelike grip) and it's a movie that I'll remember, even if I didn't enjoy it per se.
DVD Review: Easy times come hard...
Summary: 4 Stars
I missed out seeing the 70's films by German director Werner Herzog--after all, I was only a child at the time. Anyway, I recently viewed & reviewed the director's very weird, neo-horror flick HEART OF GLASS. In that review I expressed concern that Herzog had more or less "lifted" the styles of the great European directors of same era. However, I was interested enough to view Herzog's 1977 film STROSZEK. This film is more literal & realistic...AND very good.
Herzog follows in the footsteps of other talented directors in that he works with a sort of core or repetory group of actors who appear in one film after another. I recognized many faces from HEART OF GLASS also playing in STROSZEK.
At the center of the script is the character Stroszek, who I think is the same as the actor Bruno S., who is more or less playing himself. The American satrical director John Waters (HAIR SPRAY, PINK FLAMINGOS, POLYESTER, LOVE IN THE DUST etc.) is also known for casting people off the street to act in his films--often with good results. This seems to work for Herzog as well. Just as in HEART OF GLASS, you can catch a few actors who seem to be looking at the off-camera director during a shoot. Nonetheless, it's an interesting technique that can be traced back to the European mediaeval Miracle Plays.
Another production element that Walters & Herzog have in common is that pop music is an important component used to illustrate--or counterpoint--the script. Unlike Waters though, some of the music & sounds in Herzog's films are grinding & nerve rattling. There is good music too, such as in the movie's's opening sequence.
Stroszek is released from a "reformatory." You get the impression he's been in & out of jail and/or mental institution most of his life. One of the first things he does is to haul an accordian & some kind of percussion instrument in a beat up old wagon, taking his 1 man band into an alley where he gives a "recital." There are elements of Berlin "dark cabaret" in the performance that reminded me of today's Tiger Lillies "Shockheaded Peter." Stroszek's recital is wonderful.
Herzog sets his film in the underworld of the Berlin "lumpen prolitariat." This is the lowest strata of the low. (German theatre director Bertolt Brecht set most of his "epic theatre" operas & musicals in this milieu.) Stroszek is attracted to a young prostitute called Eva, and she in turn is totally dominated by her abusive pimp/boyfriend and his equally vicious associate. The movie is extremely brutal in these opening scenes, as Eva is physically & sexually abused & Strosek is physically & mentally abused by the louts.
In another apartment--or sharing the same apartment--there is a strange little man. He is the same actor who played a strange little man in HEART OF GLASS. He has the most fragile face I've ever seen.
The little man says that he is moving to rural Winconsin where a relative has a ranch ("pile of crap" would be more apt.) He invites Stroszek & Eva to join him. Stroszek thinks it's a great idea & convinces Eva that this is just what they need to keep their relationship intact. This is like when a man & a woman can't get along, so decide to have a baby in order to improve their relationship. It's a recipe for complete d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r.
Wincosin is a bust. Other reviwers have covered the plot from that point, so I'll focus on a couple points that struck my fancy. As stated above, music plays a subtle role in the movie. The song EASY TIMES COME HARD FOR ME is playing on the radio in one secene. It is an instrumental version, but the lyrics, I feel, are relevant. "Easy times come hard for me and oh, my darling/ time again to dream that you are coming home/Happy times I've had with you, do you know, my darling/ will there ever be a time I'm not alone?"
I'm not sure if the director assumed that everybody knew the un-sung lyrics, but for me the quoted verse above sums up Stroszek's mental/emotional impairment projected into his hopeless non-relationship with Eva.
Near the end of the film, the little man & Stroszek are on the run from the law (and that's another whole story). They go into a convenience store to purchase some on-the-lam provisions, and Strosek elects to purchase...a 30 lb. frozen turkey!
I believe STROSZEK is an imporant (AND entertaining) cross-cultural film...and what does Herzog do with the last precious minutes? He places his hero at a sort of barnyard animal freak show. You drop a coin in an open-view cage. In one cage when you drop in the coin, a miniature juke box starts playing & the chicken inside does a little dance! In another cage a chicken plays a piano, and yet in another a duck beats on a drum...and you know what? The little hen can really dance! She really does captivate attention.
The film concludes without even trying to supply any kind of ends-tied-up conclusion. This is a hallmark of European neo-realism. You can see this in Vittorio De Sica's UMBERTO, D and Francois Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS. I appreciate this aspect because it's very true to life. No fudged, romantic endings.
Just more questions, often left unanswered.
Umberto D. - Criterion Collection
The 400 Blows - Criterion Collection
Polyester
John Waters Collection #3: Pink Flamingos/ Female Trouble
Hairspray
The Threepenny Opera - Criterion Collection
Shockheaded Peter and Other Songs from the Tiger Lillies
Twin Peaks - The Definitive Gold Box Edition (The Complete Series)
The Damned
DVD Review: The tenacity of the reflex grip
Summary: 5 Stars
At one point in Herzog's brilliant "Stroszek," the mentally handicapped street musician Bruno (Bruno S.) and his physician are speaking. Bruno is in despair at the sordidness and violence of life. Taking him to one of the preemies in the hospital's neonatal ward, the physician holds out his two index fingers and the infant, scrawny, leathery, barely clinging to life, reaches up and grabs them so tightly that the doctor can lift him out of the cradle. There is, he tells Bruno, a remarkable reflex grip in humans. They hang on, no matter what.
The reflex grip seems to be one of the two themes running through this black comedy (is it really a comedy? I'm not sure; Herzog defies easy genre) about three of life's rejects: Eva the prostitute (Eva Mattes), the tiny ancient eccentric Mr. Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz), and Bruno. Chased out of Berlin by thugs, they migrate to Wisconsin to begin a new life, only to discover that there are new and unfamiliar threats. In Berlin, Bruno tells Maria in one particularly engaging scene, the Nazis brutally broke bodies. Here, in the U.S., Americans politely break the spirit.
Still, the three characters' reflex grip tightens in rebellion against their fate. Eva runs away from the worsening situation; Mr. Scheitz turns bandito; and Bruno, refusing to capitulate, asserts his grip by killing himself (presumably; it's a bit ambiguous).
The justly famous final scene features an antic and rather creepy funhouse into which Bruno that has cages of trained animals. One of them is a dancing chicken, who does a slippery sort of mashed-potato dance to tinny, carnivalish music. The chicken is a metaphor for the film's other theme, which is in continuous tension with the first: the fact that fate, the system, the Man, call it what you will, plays the tune and the rest of us are chickens that dance. Without the first theme, the film's message would be pretty dismal. But even as dancing chickens, the grip reflex can help us preserve some degree of autonomy and dignity.
One of Herzog's very best, with an amateur cast, except for the incredible Eva Mattes, which is simply superb.
DVD Review: Need some help...
Summary: 5 Stars
In the first half of the movie, Bruno and the old man are in Berlin yet and the old man is playing a classical piece on the piano. Soon after, those pimps bust in again and harass Stroszek.
Any idea what this song is? It's driving me crazy!
DVD Review: Unique, Funny, Odd, and (Occasionally) Dull
Summary: 4 Stars
Werner Herzog's "Stroszek" is one of the most unique and odd films I've ever seen. It's probably one of the most unique films you will ever see, with images that you'll remember long after you watch it. That doesn't mean it's a spectacular film. While it ends up on many lists of great films (including in Roger Ebert's The Great Movies II, where I heard about it) it's not, in my opinion, a great film. Many moments are dull, it requires some patience from the viewer but you'll be glad you watched it. It plays like a comedy, but seems to shy away from the genre. In the end, it's an uncategorizable film and easily one of the strangest films ever made (not counting films by David Lynch and other similar directors). Bruno S. plays Bruno Stroszek, a retarded prison who is released from prison as the film begins. He has found out that his kind neighbor Mr. Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz, you may notice a pattern of people, basically, playing themselves) has saved his apartment for him. After meeting a prostitute named Eva (Eva Mattes), who has an abusive pimp, he offers to let her stay in his apartment. Pretty soon, Mr. Scheitz has been offered by his nephew in Wisconsin to come and stay with him. Mr. Scheitz decides to go and Bruno realizes that it would be best for him and Eva to join him. Once in Wisconsin, they move into a Fleetwood mobile home and gets a job...Eva, who speaks a little English, as a waitress and Bruno as a mechanic. To say the movie has a plot would be inaccurate. It has events that could be called a plot, but Herzog cuts away for a narrative and just presents us with events that make us unable to anticipate what's going to happen next. Many of the actors playing their characters draw from their personal lives, while many of the people in Wisconsin aren't actors but people who actually lived there. In fact the man who plays Mr. Scheitz's nephew was a mechanic who fixed Herzogs car. The ending of Stroszek (that is, the last 20 minutes) are some of the most fascinating scenes I've ever seen. After losing the mobile home and everything in it, Mr. Scheitz and Bruno decide to rob a bank. It's closed, so they rob the barbershop next door. I won't give away the rest, but it's all fascinating and...Trippy. The final line of the movie is something you'd rarely, if ever, see in an American film.
Stroszek has moments that are very dull, it doesn't really have a plot, the main character is played by a man who was said to be retarded, and it's in German. There are a lot of things wrong with it, but it's a film you'll never forget.
GRADE: B-
Description of Stroszek
Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck. After they are harried and beaten by Eva's pimps, they join Bruno's neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin in search of the American dream.Stroszek is one of Werner Herzog's most accessible films, and one of his best. Herzog's clever use of kitschy folk music is just one perfect element in this mesmerizing, seriocomic "ballad" of America, in which a trio of unlikely friends leave their dreary lives in Berlin, certain that wealth and comfort await in America. Their naive American dream turns sour in rural Wisconsin, and the title character (played by Bruno S., the fascinating nonactor from Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) becomes an insanely tragic figure, celebrating a bitterly absurd Thanksgiving in the film's unforgettable closing scenes. By fusing his own intuitive, enigmatic style with factual details from the life of Bruno S., Herzog captures the elusive "ecstatic truth" that motivates his enduring cinematic vision. While deepening one of the most unusual actor-director collaborations in the history of film, Stroszek presents an American nightmare that's funny, bizarre, and deeply, magnificently human. --Jeff Shannon
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