Impressions of the 1975 World Livestock Auctioneers Championship, held in Fort Collins, Colorado. Herzog contemplates the auctioneer’s chant, which is virtually unintelligible to the layperson. In their language, akin to the sound of the Jew’s harp, the director sees something “frightening and fascinating”; he claims it could be “the last remaining lyrical form”.

Herzog errs in one respect: a caption at the beginning of the film reads: “Observations on a new language“. However, the language of the auctioneers is not a new phenomenon – it has a long tradition in rural England and Ireland. It is not new to the US either; rather it has been taken to new extremes. Fifty-three competitors from the US and Canada are in the running. Nevertheless, the event — which only lasts several hours in total — rather grandiloquently calls itself a “World Championship”. “The auctioneers speak at such great speed and with such outstanding rhythm that […] a kind of phonetic poetry emerges; a marketplace refrain at a singing contest judged not by the muses but by meat buyers.” (Jürgen Theobaldy)

Herzog, who has investigated the possibilities and boundaries of human communication in many of his works, examines here how language dissolves into figures, cadences and barely noticeable gestures between purchasers and buyers. An uninitiated bystander at the auction could easily run the risk of unwittingly purchasing a small herd of cattle with an inadvertent finger movement or an involuntary blink of the eye. Communication takes on an exclusive nature: it is only familiar to the initiated, making it much akin to the special language of German hunters, who created their own jargon to set themselves apart from the rest of society.

The director marvels at the bidders’ skills; the group includes only a single woman. “I’ve managed to reach a goal I’ve had since I was six years old,” says one auctioneer, evidently proud to have the chance to compete. Another participant recounts how he studied breathing techniques with an opera-singing teacher. All of them view themselves as experts and relentlessly practise in an endeavour to perfect their skills (using the tongue twister “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck”, for example).

It may all sound much alike to a layperson’s ears and the “lyrics” may only consist of numbers (the bidding amount). However, disparate, individual styles quickly emerge. The central motif of this film somewhat anticipates Herzog’s choice of protagonist in his filmic portraits of two preachers, HUIE’S SERMON and GOD’S ANGRY MAN (1980).

Herzog seems to take a sceptical and mistrusting view of this language. This becomes clear in the lengthy sequence he inserted into his film shot in Pennsylvania some nine months after the championship in Colorado: here he takes a look at the Amish sect and their wonderfully antiquated German, which contrasts dramatically with the ritualized language of the cattle auction. The auction towards the end of his feature film STROSZEK (1976), in which the eponymous hero’s trailer is put up for sale, can be viewed as a reaffirmation of his scepticism: the director engaged a real auctioneer he had previously captured on film in HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK for this emotive sequence. The focus here is no longer communication; all that remains is money and the destruction of a man’s existence.

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1975/1976

Production Year

1976

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:1,33

Duration

Medium-Length Film (31 to 60 Min.)

Type

Documentary

Topic

Work, Film History

Available Media

DVD, DCP, Blu-ray Disc

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

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

DCP

Subtitles

German (de), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Italian (it), Turkish (tr), Lithuanian (lt)

Note on the Format

Verschlüsseltes Herzog-Kurzfilm-Sammel-DCP (8 Filme)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (de), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Turkish (tr), Lithuanian (lt)