Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)

Following the success of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog decided to employ Bruno S., his hand-picked street-musician star, in the title role of a film adaptation of Georg Büchner's Woyzeck. At the eleventh hour, though, Herzog freaked upon realizing that this vision could only be realized with Klaus Kinski, another partner in an unconventional (to say the least) actor-director relationship, as Franz Woyzeck. But Bruno had already arranged time off from his forklift-driving job to act role he'd now lost, so Herzog rapidly penned a new script, the story of Bruno Stroszek, a title character written just for Bruno S.

Stroszek, like the actor portraying him, is released into modern society after a prolonged period of institutionalization. A runty outsider with iconoclastic habits, myriad odd possessions and a penchant for busking, he promptly returns to his old apartment. The place had been looked after, in Stroszek's absence, by the elderly Scheitz, a neighbor even more eccentric than the protagonist himself. (Scheitz, played by a man of the same name, is another product of Herzog's 70s casting habits: if you know a little old-timer with grand, bizarre conspiracy theories and a head full of outsider science, you hire him to play a little old-timer with grand, bizarre conspiracy theories and a head full of outsider science.) On his way to move in with his Wisconsonian nephew, the old man suggests to Stroszek that he might be happier making a new life in America, away from Berlin's cramped confines and menacing thugs. Taking his bird Beo and his prostitute friend Eva, Stroszek joins Scheitz's big move.

Things initially go well for Stroszek and company. He finds employment in auto mechanics, Eva starts work at a truck stop diner and Scheitz gains unlimited freedom to perform his crackpot research. (Beo gets confiscated at customs, a case of art made to imitate life when Herzog and his crew tried to bring the bird in.) But matters go south in a hurry: unable to pay the bills on their new mobile home (which, today, would be rejected as far too exaggeratedly 70s for even a 70s period piece), Eva turns back to the oldest profession and Stroszek sinks into a reverie of self-hatred. The spiral continues: one pathetic robbery, one purchased frozen turkey and one stolen tow truck later, poor Stroszek winds up at a deserted North Carolina Indian reservation, ceaselessly riding a chairlift, shotgun in hand, after pumping dozens of quarters into a "dancing chicken" machine.

This reads like a standard "heartless America chews up, spits out hopeful, innocent immigrants" story, though Herzog would seem to be too sharp to reheat that thin a gruel, even in 1977. And there's not much in the film to specifically indict America or its values; Germany, Herzog's semi-forsaken homeland, comes off even worse. It's unclear what goes wrong, exactly, in Stroszek's new American life: one day they're rejoicing amidst new wood grain and shag carpeting, and seemingly the next the bank is auctioning off all their stuff. At one point, Stroszek grumbles about having been misinformed that it's the norm to get rich quick in America, and indeed, the immigrant's wretched lament that "they promised streets paved with gold" is the stuff of a thousand interminable PBS specials. But isn't that about as likely to raise sympathy as someone telling you how crestfallen they were to find that, contrary to what they'd been assured, a kindgom made entirely of gumdrops does not lie just beyond the horizon?

But Stroszek isn't a simple story of failure, at least not primarily. It's more about the interaction between three outsiders in their own society transplanted to an even more foreign environment, and it's a senario out of which more than a few fascinating moments arise. Consider how Scheitz stops a few passing hunters — and they were genuine passing hunters off camera, flagged down by Herzog himself — in order to perform a little "animal magnetism" research with an electrometer on the bewildered men's freshly-shot deer. Or how the now-slovenly Eva and uncomprehending Stroszek sprawl on the couch across from the bank's awkward young loan officer as he tries his roundabout hardest to demand payment. Or how the desperate Scheitz and Stroszek, armed with a single shotgun, attempt to knock over a bank but take on a basement barber shop instead, running to the market across the street to buy a turkey with their appropriated lucre and immediately being spotted by the cops. Or — and none could neglect to mention this — the Indian policeman barking to his dispatcher that they're gonna need an electrician, because nobody can stop the dancing chicken.

(Like Kaspar Hauser in German, Stroszek has a better title in French: La Ballade de Bruno, if you can believe it.)