The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle = Every man for himself and God against all)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Written by Werner Herzog
1974/West Germany
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

Kaspar Hauser: It seems to me that my coming into this world was a very hard fall.

Herzog moves back to Germany for this strange story of the life of a “wild child” found on the main square of Nuremberg in 1828.

As the movie begins, we see young man Kaspar Hauser  (Bruno S.) chained up in a filthy dungeon with no companion, just his toy horse, bread and water.  He has apparently been there all his life and has never learned to talk or walk.  One day, out of the blue, a mysterious man frees Kaspar, teaches him one bizarre sentence about wanting to join the cavalry and tries to get him to walk.  He then deposits Kaspar on that square bearing a very strange note and leaves.

The townspeople are not sure what to do with him so he stays in another stable for a while but then he is placed with a family of friendly peasants.  Their young children love to teach him basic vocabulary.  Eventually, the town fathers decide Kaspar has become a burden to the community and put him to work in a circus freak show.

Then a kindly professor takes pity on Kaspar and brings him into his home.  There he  learns even more.  The nobility wants to adopt him as a curiosity but Kaspar isn’t great at controlling his behavior so that doesn’t work out. He also continues to have a strong connection to his dream world.   I’ll end here.

Bruno S. is a stiff amateur actor but somehow I find him really moving.  The story is a melancholy one and poses many interesting questions about the value of “civilization” and human nature. The film is beautiful to look at and listen to.  I like it a lot.

Bruno S. had a life as harrowing as Kaspar’s.  From IMDb: The unwanted son of a prostitute, Bruno S. was beaten so severely by his mother at age 3 that he became temporarily deaf. This led to his placement in a mental institution; he spent the next 23 years in various institutions, often running afoul of the law.  He was also reportedly subjected to Nazi experiments on mentally deficient children.   Despite this past, he became a self-taught painter and musician; while these were his favorite occupations, he was also forced to take jobs in factories. Director Werner Herzog saw him in a documentary  and vowed to work with him, which led to his major roles in this film and Stroszek (1977).

Clip – I thought Kaspar’s solution was great!