Werner Herzog’s enduringly gripping and influential movie is rereleased for its 50th anniversary; it is Herzog’s early masterpiece, a bold and brilliant retelling of a strange true story from German history, plainly and candidly staged, full of poignancy, and pathos as well as mystery, but which is also revealed here to be about the arbitrary nature of survival and death. The original German title is Jeder für Sich und Gott Gegen Alle, whch translates as Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which Herzog used as the title of his recent autobiography.
In 1828, a disturbed and feral youth appears apparently from nowhere in Nuremberg, claiming to have grown up alone, imprisoned in a dungeon like an animal and then abruptly released and abandoned. The astonished townsfolk take him in; a kindly schoolmaster looks after his education, and his rapid learning of speech and behaviour makes him celebrated in high society where he is rumoured to have noble birth – for who but a well-born family would take the trouble to conceal a disturbed child like this? And could it be that his very existence is politically embarrassing?
