Scenarios II: Signs of Life, Even Dwarfs Started Small, Fata Morgana, Heart of Glass

Movie director Herzog follows up his first screenplay collection, Scenarios, with this restlessly inventive selection of four more scripts, which sometimes differ from the completed films. Enigmatic and imaginative, Herzog creates an unfamiliar world in each screenplay through his evocative prose. Heart of Glass (1976) opens, for example, in a “somber fog” that gradually reveals a “dismal abyss.” A series of increasingly macabre events unfold in the script’s seemingly mundane settings, including an inn, a glass factory, and a forest, to show how people can end up committing acts they never imagined themselves capable of. Chaos prevails in 1970’s Even Dwarfs Started Small, a frenetic tale in which unruly inmates revolt against their institution. Herzog offers explicit instructions about the camerawork: it should be in black and white, “no matter what,” and “patient and inconspicuous.” Signs of Life (1968) methodically, scene-by-scene, depicts the progress of a revolution on a Greek island, while Fata Morgana (1971) moves in dreamlike fashion through the creation, destruction, and renewal of the world. These screenplays reveal Herzog’s meticulous attention to detail, as well as his capacity for casting a light into the corners of the human soul. (Oct.)