In his debut film, Herzog was already striving to subtly transgress the documentary genre and hints at what will become a central theme of his work – the absurdity of grandiose revolt.

Herakles, the mythical hero has been reduced to a body builder. He slaves away on all manner of fitness machines, but his efforts result only in ludicrously inflated muscles: A show of senseless, useless strength and egotistical poses.

Herzog strips this trivial, muscle-bound showiness of any mythical dimension, while juxtaposing it with the legendary trials of a hero which the down-and-out fighter is no longer capable of vanquishing. “Will he clean up the Augean stables?” asks an insert and Herzog cuts to a dismal rubbish dump. “Will he slay the Lernean hydra?” Cut to an endless row of cars stuck in a traffic jam. “Will he defeat the mares of Diomedes?” Cut to archive footage of the notorious 24-hour Le Mans race of 1955, scene of a catastrophic crash which killed 80 people. “Will he defeat the giants?” Herzog cuts to an earthquake. “Will he ward off the Stymphalian birds?” Herzog answers the question with archive footage of U.S. air force offensives.

Herzog invariably breaks up these horrific scenes with images of the bodybuilder letting his muscles play – an almost perverse game since he does nothing to change the world, and worse than that, he does not even care about it. Revolt, which obviously fascinated Herzog in his subsequent films, is still devoid of ambivalence here and undertones. This is just a lump of muscle exercising on screen, entirely disconnected from the world. The connection only comes when Herzog references the many disasters.

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1961/1962

Production Year

1962

color

b/w

Aspect Ratio

1:1.33

Duration

Short Film (to 30 Min.)

Type

Silent Film, Documentary

Topic

Psychology, Film History

Available Media

DVD, Blu-ray Disc, DCP, Digital Film

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

English (en), Spanish (es), French (fr), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil) (pt), Russian (ru), Chinese (zh), German (de), Arabic (ar), Turkish (tr)

Note on the Format

s/w

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Lithuanian (lt), Turkish (tr), Italian (it), Spanish (es), Portuguese (Brazil) (pt), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh)

Note on the Format

s/w

DCP

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Lithuanian (lt), Turkish (tr), Italian (it), Spanish (es), Portuguese (Brazil) (pt), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh)

Note on the Format

s/w

Digital Film

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Turkish (tr), Italian (it), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Chinese (short), Chinese (long), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), German (full)