Film Studies For Free has been a favorite blog for a while precisely because of announcements like this. Starzmedia, one of Herzog’s key distributors, has posted eight of Herzog’s early and mid-career films on YouTube. These include the well seen Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, Little Deiter Needs to Fly, Woyzeck, and My Best Fiend – but also a few that have been off the beaten track for a while.
It will be nice have this handy way to proselytize more Herzog fans by sneaking in these links where I can. And these have appeared right on the heels of the new Herzog material in The Paris Review and his forthcoming book on the making of Fitzcarraldo, forebodingly titled: Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo.
But I am split on the use of YouTube as a marketing ploy. Herzog’s natural cinematography in Fitzcarraldo and Lessons in Darkness will lose the entirety of its controlled chaos in the flat frame of a YouTube bracket. But then I can see Even Dwarves Started Small or Wozeck gaining additional frantic traction in the hot-house frames of streaming video. This representational axis can tilt either way. (Though I am a bit terrified by the idea that Kinski will be the ghost in my machine for any extended period of time.)
Favorite comment on Little Dieter from YouTube user chug11649: “when are they going to get some good movies on here?!?! instead of these crappy old movies”
Well played, chug11649. Well played.