Signs of Life (1968 film)

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Signs of Life

Directed by	Werner Herzog
Produced by	Werner Herzog
Written by	Werner Herzog
Starring	Peter Brogle Wolfgang Reichmann Athina Zacharopoulou Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg
Music by	Stavros Xarhakos
Cinematography	Thomas Mauch
Editing by	Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
Release date(s)	July 5, 1968
Running time	87 min.
Language	German
IMDb profile

Signs of Life (German: Lebenszeichen) is a 1968 feature film written, directed, and produced by Werner Herzog. It was his first feature film, and his first major commercial and critical success. The story is roughly based on the short story Der Tolle Invalide auf dem Fort Ratonneau, written by Achim von Arnim.^[1]

1 Plot Summary
2 Production
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot Summary

During World War II, three German soldiers are withdrawn from combat when one of them, Stroszek, is wounded. They are assigned to a small coastal community on the Greek island of Kos while Stroszek recuperates. The men become increasingly stir crazy in their uneventful new assignment. Stroszek eventually goes mad.

[edit] Production

The fortress which gives the film's main setting is a real 14th century fortress built by the Knights Hospitaller. Herzog's grandfather, Rudolf Herzog, lived and worked for several years as an archaeologist at this site, and published translations of the ancient Greek engravings which appear in the film. The old Turkish man who appears in the film with a written translation was the last surviving worker from Rudolf Herzog's archaeological project.^[2]

During several shots, Peter Brogle could only be filmed from the waist up after he had been injured in a tight-rope accident and spent several months in a walking cast.^[2]

The man who appears as a pianist in one scene is keyboardist Florian Fricke of Popol Vuh, who composed and performed the music for many of Herzog's later films.

Many of Herzog's later films reference elements of Signs of Life. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser includes a scene with a hypnotized chicken, and the main character's name is given to Herzog's film Stroszek. The Wild Blue Yonder contains a shot of a valley of windmills.

[edit] References

^ Herzog, Werner (2001). Herzog on Herzog. Faber and Faber, 38. ISBN 0-571-20708-1.
^ ^a ^b Werner Herzog, audio commentary for Signs of Life DVD

[edit] External links

Lebenszeichen at the Internet Movie Database

v • d • e Films directed by Werner Herzog

1960s	Herakles (1962) • Game in the Sand (1964) • The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967) • Last Words (1967) • Signs of Life (1968) • The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969) Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)

1970s	Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) • Handicapped Future (1971) • Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) • Fata Morgana (1971) • Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) • The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974) • The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) • Heart of Glass (1976) • No One Will Play With Me (1976) • How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976) • Stroszek (1977) • La Soufrière (1977) • Nosferatu the Vampyre (1978) • Woyzeck (1978)

1980s	Huie's Sermon (1981) • God's Angry Man (1981) • Fitzcarraldo (1982) • Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984) • The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984) • Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) • Portrait Werner Herzog (1986) • Cobra Verde (1987) • The French as seen by... (1988) • Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun (1989)

1990s	Film Lesson 1-4 (1990) • Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990) • Jag Mandir (1991) • Scream of Stone (1991) • Lessons of Darkness (1992) • Bells from the Deep (1993) • The Transformation of the World Into Music (1994) • Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) • Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) • The Lord and the Laden (1999) • My Best Fiend (1999)

2000s	Wings of Hope (2000) • Invincible (2001) • Pilgrimage (2001) • Ten Minutes Older (2002) • Wheel of Time (2003) • The White Diamond (2004) • Grizzly Man (2005) • The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) • Rescue Dawn (2007) • Encounters at the End of the World (2007) • The Cheese and the Worms (2008)