Heart of Glass

Heart of Glass (1976)

Herz aus Glas

A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.

Date of release
1976-11-12
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (137)
Runtime
1h 34m
Genres
Drama
Director
Werner Herzog

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Switzerland

Heart of Glass is a 1976 German film directed and produced by Werner Herzog, set in 18th century Bavaria. The film was written by Herzog, based partly on a story by Herbert Achternbusch. The main character is Hias, based on the legendary Bavarian prophet Mühlhiasl.

Production

During shooting, almost all of the actors performed while under hypnosis. Every actor in every scene was hypnotized, with the exception of the character Hias and the professional glassblowers who appear in the film. The hypnotized actors give very strange performances, which Herzog intended to suggest the trance-like state of the townspeople in the story. Herzog provided the actors with most of their dialogue, memorised during hypnosis.

The majority of the film was shot in Bavaria, just a few miles from where Herzog was raised in the remote village of Sachrang (nestled in the Chiemgau Alps), and also at a nearby village in Switzerland. Other brief shots of landscape scenes were filmed in various locations around the world that Herzog scouted out, including Yellowstone National Park and the Viamala canyon. The conclusion of the film was shot on the Skellig Islands.

Herzog, along with other members of the crew, has a cameo as one of the men carrying a load of ruby glass to the lake.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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