Review of Fata Morgana (1972) by Stuart K — 17 Jan 2012

While filming The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969) and Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) all at the same time, director Werner Herzog found the time for another film while he was at this, this very freeform experimental film that looks and feels like a documentary, but it isn't, it's something alot more than that.

From the footage Herzog has collected for this, it looks like something from another world entirely. Filmed over 2 years in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lanzarote, Mali and Tanzania. It starts with Herzog and his cameraman Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein filming mirages out in Africa, but it soon moves from that to capture the landscapes and visual beauty of the countryside, it's almost like a character in itself in the film.

Talking to locals and picking up imagery of dead animals and rusting old cars. The film is punctuated with songs by Leonard Cohen and Blind Faith, and a narration by the Chief curator of the Cinà (C)mathèque Française Lotte Eisner, which gives a mythical quality to the Sahara Desert and it's surroundings.

The result is the closest thing to a sci-fi film that Herzog had made at the time, but it would be something he would later do again with Lessons of Darkness (1992) and The Wild Blue Yonder (2005). There has been nothing like this since, and only Herzog could create a film of mythical beauty like this.

He's truly one of a kind.