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The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, or Every Man for Himself and God Against All
(Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle)

Screening on Film
Directed by Werner Herzog.
With Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira.
West Germany, 1974, 16mm, color, 110 min.
German with English subtitles.

Reminiscent of Truffaut’s The Wild Child in theme but decidedly darker in its conclusions, Herzog’s film opens in Nuremberg in 1828, where a grown man is found catatonic in the town square. He is Kaspar Hauser, the ultimate Herzogian outsider: without speech, reason, or memory, and without human contact since childhood. Initially treated as a curiosity, he is gradually educated in the ways of Western civilization. But his initiation into the mysteries of language, logic, and religion only drives him to despair. The film’s visual style (odd angles, awkward compositions, unusual lighting) conveys Kaspar’s perceptual disorientation, an estrangement heightened by the inspired casting of Bruno S.—a former schizophrenic who spent many years in institutions.

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