Alternative Film Guide

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:

No filmmaker’s career has been more defined and structured by the musical choices he has made than German film director Werner Herzog. This claim is evident from his first full-length feature, Lebenszeichen / Signs of Life (1968), which he made when he was twenty-four three years after having written the screenplay. (Though getting the idea for it, he claims, when he was fifteen or sixteen, apparently from a story by German author Ludwig Achim von Arnim [1781-1831].) Nonetheless, Signs of Life is an extraordinary film, not because it is technically brilliant but because it espouses such a mature artistic touch.

A good counterpoint to Signs of Life would be Martin Scorsese’s debut film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door? Even though that first film shows much talent, it is the art of a young man, for in Who’s That Knocking at My Door? the protagonist suffers the angst that is pervasive among young men. By contrast, the hero of Herzog’s debut film is suffering from something far deeper and more profound — the sort of psycho-spiritual ravages that beset one in a midlife crisis. Yet, it’s not merely the protagonist’s crisis that makes Signs of Life a mature work, but how said crisis is represented. Herzog’s approach to his subject matter shows why he would become the most daring, if not the greatest, filmmaker of the last forty years.

Signs of Life is spare in its dialogue, its visuals, and its music, but like a Beckett play gone straight this approach only heightens the attention needed to the smallest of details. That’s where the emotive brilliance of the Greek string music, as evocative as the zither used in The Third Man, comes in, even as it counterpoints against the images the film unleashes.

Signs of Life starts with a voiceover narration which runs through the whole film. A wounded Wehrmacht soldier and parachutist named Stroszek (Peter Brogle) — with no connection to the lead character of Herzog’s 1977 film Stroszek — is wounded in a Nazi attack on Greece during the Second World War. Stroszek is recovering on the remote Aegean Island of Kos, where the horrors of war have yet to reach. Indeed, only sixty German soldiers are needed to keep the sedentary locals in line.

Stroszek is given light duty guarding an ancient fortress and ammunition dump with two other soldiers: thin intellectual Becker (Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg) and older, heavy and balding Meinhard (Wolfgang Reichmann). He is also given permission to marry one of the local Greek girls, Nora (Athina Zacharopoulou), who is trying to learn German. Together, the quartet’s greatest battle is against boredom in the enervating dry, hot, and craggy landscape.

Becker becomes obsessed with decoding ancient Greek tablets, while the dimmer Meinhard obsesses over the island’s cockroaches, attempting to devise elaborate Rube Goldbergian traps for the insects. In the meantime, the married couple cavort and show affection in assorted ways, but Stroszek is clearly not all there. In modern terms, he would be described as suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Even so, for the first two thirds of the film Stroszek is able to keep his ills in check despite the mounting ennui. Meinhard, on the other hand, is clearly not all there, but on a much more obvious plane. He distrusts a claimed Gypsy King (Julio Pinheiro) from Portugal that they encounter, but is fascinated by the man’s life and tricks, including a small wooden owl whose ears and eyes move. Meinhard cannot figure out how such a small device works until he opens it up and sees the Gypsy has trapped several flies within, and it is their movement which powers the toy. This discovery sickens Meinhard.

Herzog balances the humans’ dull routines by focusing on little "synchronicities," such as fish that swim in circles, or the patterns of humans in the small island town. This is a very important aspect of the film for most artists are incapable of depicting boredom without making boring art. Herzog shows that boredom can be captured in riveting ways.

All of the islanders — both German and Greek — it turns out, are in one way or another, touched by Stroszek. When he goes mad — not long after an encounter with a pianist (longtime Herzog musical collaborator Florian Fricke) who tells him of Chopin’s madness — locks himself in the garrison, and threatens to explode it, the Nazi commanders do not simply overwhelm him.

Stroszek feels his buddies have betrayed him by snitching on the fact that he shot wantonly at some of the local windmills — which seemed endless and almost oneiric — whilst bored on an assignment guarding some mountain ridges. For several days, Stroszek holds the rest of the soldiers off, merely ranting from afar (the camera never gets another close up of him after his insanity, as the real star and antagonist of the film — the barren island — moves to the fore of the film). He sets off fireworks, a bit of absurdity which only kills a local donkey.

Eventually, he is subdued, and the film’s narrator tells us that Stroszek was carted off and treated. We do not see this, only the image, from the back of a vehicle driving down a dusty road on the island, as mournful Greek music plays. Stroszek, in his insanity, seems to be the only person on the island who still values beauty and the richer aspects of life, even as the narrator tells us that, ‘like all others before him he has totally failed.’

The DVD, put out by New Yorker Video, comes with the original German theatrical trailer and a film commentary by Herzog, and moderated by Norman Hill, from Anchor Bay DVDs. The 86-minute film is not dubbed into English, and only has subtitles, in white, which occasionally wash out against the harsh whitened black-and-white landscapes the film presents.

Signs of Life also has German subtitles over some of the spoken Greek, and is shown in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The image is good, though there are occasional blemishes. Thomas Mauch’s spare cinematography is terrific, and manifestly influenced by the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, especially L’Avventura, which was also filmed in the Mediterranean.

The commentary by Herzog, one of the best DVD commenters around, also happens to be one of his very best. He not only expounds on the provenance of the film and its images, but on many of his artistic views. In it, he mentions his childhood, his legendary pre-moviemaking past, and two of the short films he made before this one: Last Words and The Unprecedented Defense of the Fortress Deutschkreuz — a sort of a prequel to Signs of Life.

Herzog also claims that Signs of Life was made on a mere US$20,000 budget, after winning a German screenwriting award, and that he did it with a stolen 35mm film camera. Additionally, Herzog explains that the reason he named the leading character Stroszek (in both Signs of Life and Stroszek) was because that was the name of a classmate in college who did some assignments for him. Thus, naming his film characters after his college friend was a form of payback.

The reasons why Signs of Life succeeds are manifold, but chief among them is that, even at an early age, Herzog presents the German soldiers as men, instead of as rabid Nazi ideologues. All three of the film’s male leads were likely conscripted against their will, and seem to long for nothing more than the end of the war. Also, the black-and-white imagery captures a series of life-like moments, which later Herzog films would capitalize on, especially Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen / Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970).

Overall, however, Signs of Life remains relevant because it blends music and imagery in ways few films ever have, thus backing up Herzog’s later claim that he’s never made an error in musical selection for a film. Signs of Life is his first proof, but thankfully not his last. Here’s hoping that that is one note whose resonance will continue to reverberate.

© Dan Schneider

Lebenszeichen / Signs of Life (1968). Director: Werner Herzog. Cast: Peter Brogle, Wolfgang Reichmann.

Writer, critic, and poet Dan Schneider is the editor of Cosmoetica, which he describes as “the most popular non-commercial literary site online.”

Other reviews by Dan Schneider can be found at Cinemension, Cosmoetica’s “film division.”

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of Mr. Schneider, and they may not reflect the views of the Alternative Film Guide.

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