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A young man named Kaspar Hauser suddenly appears in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, and bearing a strange note.A young man named Kaspar Hauser suddenly appears in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, and bearing a strange note.A young man named Kaspar Hauser suddenly appears in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, and bearing a strange note.
- Awards
- 5 wins & 3 nominations
- Director
- Writers
- Werner Herzog
- Jakob Wassermann(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaWerner Herzog's said at his Rogue Film School, that the following scenes were shot with a Super-8mm camera: a) The opening scene on the river. b) The montage of landscape shots early in the film. c) Right after the man in black teaches Kaspar how to walk. d) The Caucasus pyramid sequence. e) The caravan in the desert with the old man tasting the sand. Herzog talked about how, for some of the landscape shots early in the film, he mounted a telephoto lens on the end of wide angle lens onto his Super 8 camera. This distorted the edges of the images and created a white/halo effect around the frame. On the DVD audio commentary of this film, he mentions how for the Caucasus pyramid sequence he projected the image onto a screen and then re-photographed the image with a 35mm camera at a different frame rate from the projected speed. He also used this technique with the caravan in the desert sequence.
- GoofsIn a brief scene we see a stork eating a frog with its legs tagged (ringed), but bird ringing didn't start until the end of the nineteenth century, decades after the life of Kaspar Hauser.
- Quotes
Opening caption: Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.
- Crazy creditsOpening credits prologue: One Sunday in 1828 a ragged boy was found abandoned in the town of N. He could hardly walk and spoke but one sentence.
Later, he told of being locked in a dark cellar from birth. He had never seen another human being, a tree, a house before.
To this day no one knows where he came from - or who set him free.
Don't you hear that horrible screaming all around you? That screaming men call silence?
- ConnectionsFeatured in I Am My Films (1978)
- SoundtracksCanon in D major
Composed by Johann Pachelbel
Featured review
Learning to think
It's a well known philosophical conundrum, would a man be able to think (or even be properly considered a man) if he was denied all sensory stimulation? In Nuremburg in 1828, there was a practical test of this proposition, when a person was discovered in town who had spent all his previous life incarcerated and denied human contact. He was duly taught how to think; but in fact, was not grateful for the experience. Werner Herzog's film examines the strange life of Kaspar Hauser - I find it hard to say whether or not I consider it a good film, because that life itself was so strange. Certainly it better recreated the bafflement of those who interacted with Kaspar than it managed to suggest what it really felt like to be Kaspar - but then, who could know? It's probably not Herzog's greatest achievement - but it's certainly an intriguing subject.
helpful•121
- paul2001sw-1
- Jun 1, 2010
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- Filming locations
- Croagh Patrick, Westport, Mayo, Ireland(archive footage)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $2,989
- Runtime1 hour 50 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) officially released in India in English?
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