''La Soufrière – Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe'' ("La Soufrière – Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster") is a 1977

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

in which

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

director

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...

visits an island on which a

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

is predicted to erupt. The pretext of this film was provided when Herzog "heard about the impending volcanic eruption, that the island of Guadeloupe had been evacuated and that one peasant had refused to leave, eknew ewanted to go talk to him and find out what kind of relationship towards death he had" (Cronin). Herzog explores the deserted streets of the towns on the island. The crew of three treks up to the

caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcano eruption. When large volumes of magma are erupted over a short time, structural support for the rock above the magma chamber is ...

, where clouds of sulfurous steam and smoke drift like "harbingers of death" (Peucker), an example of the sublime Herzog seeks to conjure in his films. Herzog converses in French with three different men he finds remaining on the island: one says he is waiting for death, and even demonstrates his posture for doing so; another says he has stayed to look after the animals. In the end, the volcano did not erupt, thus sparing the lives of those who had remained on the island, including Herzog and his crew.

References

* Paul Cronin, ''Herzog on Herzog'' (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2002, ) p. 148. *

Brigitte Peucker Brigitte Peucker (born 13 April 1948, in Berlin, Germany) is the Elias Leavenworth Professor of German Languages and Literatures and Professor of Film Studies at Yale University. A disciple of Yale University's Geoffrey Hartman, she has written o ...

, "In Quest of the Sublime," ''New German Filmmakers: From Oberhausen Through the 1970s'', edited by Klaus Phillips (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1984, hardcover: and paperback: ) p. 168.

External links

*
''La Soufriere''
at Allmovie
Werner Herzog on filming ''La Soufrière''
(Video interview from '' Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary'') 1977 films 1977 documentary films German documentary films West German films Documentary films about disasters Films set in Guadeloupe Films shot in Guadeloupe Documentary films about volcanoes 1970s German films {{hist-documentary-film-stub

See also

References

External links