Apologies to anybody stumbling across this post who expected to see an insanely photogenic Debbie Harry in a deserted disco, sashaying and swirling around in a silvery dress. This Heart of Glass (or Herz aus Glas to give it its original German title) is something very, very different and I would have to admit, not much of a gas.

Following Aguirre, the Wrath of God and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, in 1976 director Werner Herzog took one of the many unorthodox decisions which have been a regular feature of his career. Already having established himself along with Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a leading light in German New Wave Cinema (also known as the New German Cinema movement), he placed classified ads in several local Bavarian newspapers, seeking to cast many of the respondees in his next film and deliberately neglecting to mention his own name.

Hardly an original idea you might say. But here’s the idiosyncratic part: the ads also mentioned that before being selected, the potential actors would be required to undergo hypnosis for their auditions. And that while on camera if chosen, they would be acting under hypnosis too with only a single exception in the main cast.

Hias (Josef Bierbichler), a mysterious herdsman and seer, is that exception, although such is his intensity that you could be forgiven for assuming that he had been sent into a trance too.

Everything is trancelike in Heart of Glass. We see some weird timelapse landscapes where fog and clouds speed forward relentlessly like a river above the Bavarian hills and forests. Hias makes a series of apocalyptic visions predicting the end of the world. ‘This is the beginning of the end,’ he announces. ‘The world’s edge begins to crumble, everything starts to collapse…’ Not the cheeriest of chappies, it would have to be said.

In a remote village in the late 18th century, the man who devised the formula for perfect Ruby glass has just died and somehow no-one else working in the glassworks that produces the precious ornaments has ever been supplied with the secret formula. Their livelihoods threatened, the inhabitants of the village sleepwalk into a deep malaise and the performances undoubtedly possess a highly peculiar quality that Herzog judged was suitable for their slide into a collective catastrophe. Mostly the actors deliver their lines as if they’ve just swallowed a handful of Mogodons. 

Should Herzog have told his hypnotized cast that they were world-class actors? Not surprisingly, that wouldn’t work. As events progressed, I did begin to speculate on whether the film wouldn’t have been better without the hypnosis and I also, as my mind wandered, briefly wondered if Ian Curtis, who had committed suicide after watching Herzog’s Stroszek, had developed a fascination in hypnosis through his interest in the director – in an attempt to persuade Curtis not to kill himself, Bernard Sumner hypnotised the singer in the weeks leading up to his suicide. I digress.

‘The film is meant to convey an atmosphere of hallucination, of prophecy, of the visionary, and of collective madness,’ Herzog explained to Alan Greenberg for his book Every Night the Trees Disappear.

He certainly succeeded in this aim. Heart of Glass is as strange as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire and it is definitely not for everyone. The pace is slow, the dialogue minimal and I could only guess at the reason for the inclusion of a number of scenes such as when Hias enters into the mouth of a cave and speedily exits, followed by a bear. An imaginary (and invisible) bear, which he goes on to wrestle before managing to knife it several times, killing it. More bears later, incidentally.

Fascinating though it undoubtedly is, it seldom gripped me the way Herzog’s best films have. It is, though, visually striking throughout, and the soundtrack is intriguing too, much of it provided by German music collective Popol Vuh, albeit their tracks weren’t created specifically for the film. They’re an act I seldom listen to although their evocative music works wonderfully in many Herzog movies, especially Aguirre. As unique a sound as their German contemporaries Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream.

Finally, according to IMDb’s trivia page on the film, in a New Musical Express interview from May 1979, Debbie Harry mentioned that Heart of Glass producer Mike Chapman had named the Blondie track after the film.

If you enjoyed Heart of Glass then you might also enjoy Grizzly Man. In fact, even if you hated Heart of Glass, you’ll very likely be drawn into Herzog’s 2005 American documentary.

Timothy Treadwell spent thirteen consecutive summers in Katmai National Park in the Alaskan wilderness, where he lived beside a colony of (non-imaginary) brown bears. What I’m about to tell you isn’t really a spoiler as the documentary quickly lets viewers know that there was a good reason why Treadwell failed to make it back for a fourteenth summer. This is the story of the grisly death of the grizzly man.

Timothy is undoubtedly a curious character. He claimed that he just missed out on the role of Woody in Cheers which I find dubious. Hey, I’m generally cynical about any claims made by attention seekers and Timothy definitely craved attention. And would invent stories to try and make himself appear more interesting, such as pretending that he was Australian.

He can be manic. He places his hands over some fresh bear shit and can’t hide his excitement and joy to be touching it. He can be arrogant – boasting about his sexual prowess and constantly talking up his achievement in helping keep the bears safe from poachers (although this isn’t seen as much a particular problem by the Alaskan wildlife authorities).

Certainly, he did record some video footage of a bunch of scumbags throwing a few rocks at a bear from the safety of their boat. This rightly pissed him off, but the guy who has persuaded himself that his presence was essential to their safety, failed to confront the men, although he was prone to ranting dementedly about poachers and the park service when no one else was around, the self-styled ‘kind warrior’ coming over as more of an eco diva.

Feted and funded by a number of Hollywood celebs in his self-appointed role of environmental activist and bear expert, he was invited into schools to teach kids, presumably filling their heads with nonsense about his furry ‘friends’.

Local park rangers and others with genuine expertise and less malleable minds weren’t so impressed. As the indigenous director of a museum dedicated to Alaska’s Alutiiq people, notes: ‘Where I grew up, the bears avoid us and we avoid them.’ There is an established reason for this.

Insisting they’re misunderstood and calling them sappy names like Mister Chocolate and Cracker, Treadwell convinced himself that he had established a special bond with the creatures that involved trust and respect, claiming ‘I’m one of them’, but no matter how many times he would coo ‘I love you’ to them, these animals don’t want humans encroaching on what they consider their territory.

Grizzlies are grizzlies and will often fight each other ferociously. Adult bears can be cannibalistic and eat cubs. Timothy was aware of these facts and acknowledged that he could be killed by them, but refused to carry a gun or even anti-bear spray for protection and would frequently treat them almost as if they were humans in bear suits, failing repeatedly to keep a safe – and respectful – distance from them. We even see footage of him touching one on the snout.

He possessed an excess of reckless courage, but this is not always necessarily a good thing. Do we admire the man who plays a game of Russian roulette with himself?

On the plus side, he did capture some breathtaking footage of the animals which Herzog utilizes regularly. Treadwell desperately needed the bears to give a purpose to his often troubled life. They needed him, or at least one did, for food.

The saddest part of the story is that he persuaded a girlfriend to accompany him on that doomed final visit. She was eaten alive by the same bear that had just killed him. Despite his good intentions, Treadwell’s actions not only brought about his own death, but he was complicit in hers and, ironically, the bear who killed them both had to be shot, along with a younger bear who charged the park rangers as they investigated the human deaths.

A new documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer came out last month on a BFI blu-ray. For more information click here.