The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner - Werner Herzog - 1974

If we can procure one thread that manages to run throughout the twisted catalogue that forms the 40 plus year career of everyone’s favourite German madman Werner Herzog, then it surely that of the wilful outsider, people who transcend societies self imposed boundaries in some form of euphoric personal odyssey. People who stumble along the fine line of genius/fevered craziness, inebriated by their need to push the limits of personal endurance. People who we can’t help but see as varied series of reflections on Herr Herzog himself.

We don’t have to look far to find examples of this, from his infamous exploits with Kinski bringing to life egomaniacal adventurers bounding along the Amazon and through the jungle in Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), to his documentaries charting the lives of people who choose to outcast themselves in some of the world’s most inhospitable places such as the Sahara in Fata Morgana (1971), Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World (2007) and in Alaska with a shit load of hungry Bears in Grizzly Man (2005).

The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner proves to be one of the greatest examples of this auteurist trait. Following an astounding opening sequence in which we see a ski ‘flight’ played to us at 1/20th speed set to the mesmeric tones of regular Herzog collaborator Popol Vuh. We meet the titular Walter Steiner, a gangly and unassuming young Swiss man with a penchant for woodcraft and throwing himself 170 metres through the air off ramps with only a pair of sticks on his feet for protection.

Here we enter the mad world of Ski-flying, that’s right, not ski-jumping, but its altogether more extreme offshoot ski flying. Rather than attempt to contextualise the event for us, and attempt meaningful psychological examination of those who take part, Herzog explains it all with the previously mention super slow speed camera footage. This stunning imagery captures perfectly the sheer euphoria (or ecstasy) the competitors feel upon embracing the closest we can come to the grace of flight without evolving ourselves a pair of wings.

Unfortunately, the graceful flight is often not met with an equally decorative landing, and we also get to witness what happens when it all goes horrifically wrong upon returning to terra firma. Though rather than some garish ESPN style ‘When Ski-Flights go wrong!” exploitation, Herzog even lends these scenes an elegiac touch.

It is this conflict of the ecstasy versus the danger that we find Steiner caught it. Steiner was at the time the most amazing ski-flyer the world had ever seen, other top competitors it seemed even avoided events he was involved in, as whatever length the pack would set, Steiner would throw on another 30 metres. This leads to an event in Yugoslavia where Steiner crushes previous records to such an extent that he is left with little safety run off, culminating in him having a bad fall, leaving him bloodied and concussed.

It is here that the film becomes especially interesting, as Steiner wishes to leave the event, but the organisers begin to apply pressure, demanding he perform again for the paying audiences. Here the film begins to raise questions of an athlete’s responsibility to his fans, as Steiner becomes convinced that they only come to watch because of a car-crash mentality bloodlust, waiting for the moment when he pushes the limits just one step too far. We leave Steiner as a melancholy character unsure of his future within the sport.

In a back catalogue peppered liberally with must see pictures, I’d go as far to say that The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner is right up there with the very best of Herzog’s oeuvre. He always seems to be at his best when he transcends the sometimes quotidian seeming nature of the subjects he chooses and wraps them in a dreamlike weave, blurring lines between documentation of an event and artful romanticism. Nowhere is that better found than here.

Possession - Andrzej Zulawski - 1981

If ever an argument can be made against generic pigeonholing then surely exhibit A for the prosecution would be Andrzej Zulawski’s apocalyptic horror/art-house/thriller/drama/surrealist domestic dispute picture Possession. The film is often advertised as a horror film in the vein of the European demonic possession films that were released in the wake of Bill Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), and one of the film’s region 1 DVD releases even sees the film unceremoniously dumped into a ‘Drive-In’ double pack with the late career Mario Bava Repulsion knock off Shock (1977). If there is one place Zulawski’s picture explicitly does not belong, it’s that ye old home of American teenage mating rituals.

The film begins with images of a decrepit late cold war era Berlin. Zulawski casts the action primarily in streets that surround that omnipresent image of government control and repression in the form of the Berlin Wall (it should be noted here that Zulawski is very much a victim of government oppression, he has, since this picture spent his career making films in France following suppression of his work in his native Poland).

We immediately find ourselves in the company of Mark (Sam Neill) who appears to work for some shady government agency, and is just returning from an extended assignment. He arrives home and is immediately caught in a domestic argument with his spouse Anna (Isabelle Adjani). With this Zulawski throws the audience immediately off kilter. The argument refers to many things we are not privy to, and tensions between the pair have clearly been building for some time, exploding before our eyes without clear exposition within the first minutes of the film, leaving the viewer confused in medias res.

For the first thirty or so minutes, the film comes across like Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) recast with mental patients. Both central performers give such extreme performances that it’s amazing that they remained stable following conclusion of the picture. Sam Neill, not a stranger to psychological horror, flits wildly between Somnambulistic calm and hysterical rage, whilst Adjani (who deservedly won the best actress award at Cannes for her performance) provides a stunning mental collapse that soon becomes deeply uncomfortable to watch. Previous to this picture my primary experience of Adjani’s work had been her ‘kooky’ turn in Polanski’s The Tenant (1976) and her purposefully muted and ethereal performances in Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978) and Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu (1979), which made the impact of her performance here all the more overwhelming.

After this opening half hour, and Mark’s subsequent hiring of a private investigator to find out what his wife is up to, the film’s previous preoccupation with the breakdown of a family unit makes way for surrealism and symbolism, as it is revealed that as well as conducting an extra-marital affair with the sinister bi-sexual kung-fu loving Terrence Stamp alike Heinrich (Heinz Bennett). Anna is also shacked up in a dilapidated squat with a creature that appears like the half formed afterbirth of a H.R. Giger creation (actually created by Carlo Rambaldi, who would go on to operate ET!) . A mess of phallic tentacles and goo, could this creature be a result of Anna’s frenzied insanity? (ala Cronenberg’s 1979 divorce catharsis The Brood) And holy shit is it slowly evolving into something more human possibly? (Clive Barker was surely taking notes).

The film descends further into delirium as Anna appears to miscarry in cinema’s most disturbing subway passage scene outside of Gasper Noė’s Irreversible (2002). Bodies begin to pile up, Mark gets involved in a relationship with an idealised doppelganger of Anna, the government agency decide they need to ‘terminate’ Mark’s contract, and all the while Anna’s secret lover begins to evolve as the plot moves towards complete Armageddon.

If this all sounds like unbridled chaos, that’s because it is. Fortunately Zulawski somehow manages to keep control of proceedings and directs with the assurance of someone who truly believes in his work. The opening half of the film is played out in cramped modernist apartments that seem to be as much made up of tight corridors as rooms. Zulawski’s camera prowling round the abodes with a frenzied abandon complementing our protagonists increasingly fractured states. By the second half though, he cools and we seem to be in a Berlin more akin to the Lower East Side in the early 80’s, large old spaces crippled by a decaying ghettoisation. He then turns everything on its head and creates an action cinema pastiche to conclude proceedings. By this point it is more than evident Zulawski is one of those precious mad fuckers who laugh in the face of the ‘language’ of cinema.

Zulawski has continued a career of defying generic expectations he has gone on to subvert such areas as science fiction, the period drama and the musical. A one of a kind maverick, enter the world of Zulawski with an open mind and reap the benefits of a disturbed and fevered imagination.

Detour - Edgar G. Ulmer - 1945

When we think of the locations in which the classics of film noir were set, usually a combination of stygian back alleys and pernicious drinking dens come to mind as our gumshoe protagonist finds himself way out of his depth in a city of hard knocks. The genre did though create a small niche in its appropriation of the road movie, changing the highways of the United States from a never ending vista of self discovery to a place of fateful self-destruction. The roots of this sub-genre can be seen in the likes of Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937), a tale of an ex-convict on the run for a murder he did not commit, and Raoul Walsh’s Bogie starring trucker flick They Drive by Night (1940). Today though, the most renowned cult classic of this period is a $30,000 poverty row quickie that goes by the name of Detour.

Despite its impoverished birth, the film is not without the previous form to suggest that it may be worthwhile, namely émigré director Edgar G. Ulmer. Though by this point he had been reduced to knocking out ‘made in a week’ b-movie fodder, Ulmer had wandered the hallowed hallways of UFA during the 1920’s, adding his production design talents to such classics as Der Golem (1920), The Last Laugh (1924) and Metropolis (1927) before joining the Diaspora of German talent that headed for Hollywood following the election of the National Socialists. In Hollywood he most famously brought his expressionist talents to the direction of the Lugosi/Karloff picture The Black Cat (1934) before gradually falling out of favour with the major studios.

His talent for the hallucinatory atmospheres of expressionism are still in evidence even here in the story of downtrodden New York dive bar pianist Al Roberts (A permanently perspiring Tom Neal looking not unlike Michael Rooker’s Henry). Roberts becomes disconsolate when the singer in his bar (and his ‘gal’) Sue (a barely used Claudia Drake) decides to leave New York and take the much clichéd stab at fame in Hollywood. Roberts soon decides to follow her, but must make his way across the country by thumbing rides. Once he reaches Arizona, Roberts, whose existence has become increasingly transient, thinks that he has finally found some luck when Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald) a shady pill popping bookie in a sleek convertible offers him food and a ride all the way to Los Angeles. His luck is soon out again though when Haskell appears to have a heart attack and upon trying to help him, Roberts becomes convinced that he may have inadvertently caused his death. Fearing police reprisals Roberts decides to hide the body and assume Haskell’s identity until he arrives in LA.

This plan appears to work out until he foolishly picks up a hitchhiker named Vera (Ann Savage, an apt name for a hellcat performance). Vera acts standoffish with Roberts and soon drops the killer line “What did you do with the body?” Vera it transpires had earlier ridden with Haskell and is well aware she is now in the car of a dead man, and so becomes Roberts bête noire, as she makes increasingly ludicrous demands of him in order to secure her silence. The film soon decamps in a Los Angeles of cheap motel rooms and car lots, with Vera thundering around the screen like a fireball hurtling towards the sun, as the film heads towards its bleak denouement.

The film clearly provides an intriguing premise, but the most interesting aspect is Roberts, who as our first person narrator comes across as untrustworthy. His story comes across as the increasingly subjective ravings of a possible madman. This is a guy who despite playing in dive bars, has a David Helfgott like talent for the piano. A man whose girlfriend leaves him to find fame, but then agrees to his on a whim decision of marriage. As his bad luck story continues, Roberts is almost pleading with the audience to believe his increasingly farfetched tale.

Set with knocking out 68 minutes of main feature seat warming fodder, Ulmer somehow created an embittered slice of classic noir, a world where everyone is on the make. Where the only person we are meant to trust may just be the loosest nut of the lot of them.

It seems that this film is now public domain and can be watched or downloaded for your viewing pleasure here http://www.archive.org/details/Detour, completely gratis! You now have no excuses not to check this king amongst b-movies out.