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Werner Herzog Chats With NPR, Talks Three Must See Films

Have   you ever wondered, walking through a video rental shop or trying to look through the Netflix catalogue, only to not know quite what to toss into your queue or rip off the shelf?

Then how about letting Werner Herzog help with that problem?

Herzog recently sat down with NPR, and let us all on to a few of his favorite films, three to be exact.

First, for those who may not know, Herzog runs a special series of seminars known as the Rouge Film School, and with a mission statement starting with ‘The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted,’ you can kind of get the image of Herzog running a film school burnt into your brain.

During the interview, the director mentions a few of the films that find their way onto the syllabus at the school, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Viva Zapata, and Swingtime.   There couldn’t be a better trilogy of film to sum up the filmmaker.





With Sierra Madre, you get one of film’s most classic adventure films, and with looking at the film’s themes, while not as inherently obsession based as Herzog’s filmography, you definitely see a bit of correlation between the two.   Then, with Viva Zapata, you get the legendary Elia Kazan directed biopic, which is something, with Rescue Dawn, you definitely see a bit of relationship there.   The one film I can’t speak to here is Swingtime as, unfortunately, it’s on my list of shame as I haven’t gotten down to watching it.   However, if it’s one of Herzog’s favorites, it’s going straight to the top of my queue.

If you had a film school, what three films would you have on your syllabus?

Source: NPR

Joshua Brunsting

Josh is a critic, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, a wrestling nerd, a hip-hop head, a father, a cinephile and a man looking to make his stamp on the world, one word at a time.

1 comment

  • Methinks the Rouge Film School is the one in Alaska. :)

    I’ve not seen any of these three films, so I should get on that or Werner is going to yell at me in front of the class.