Many movie actors are famous for their unmistakable voices – people like Sean Connery, John Wayne and Peter Lorre, who all pub comedians mimic. But how many directors are like that? Only one: the German auteur Werner Herzog, hero of the New German Cinema, who at the age of 81 has published this headspinning, free-associating memoir. Its German title, Jeder Für Sich Und Gott Gegen Alle, was also the original, anarchic title of Herzog’s 1974 film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, based on the true story of a boy reportedly brought up in an isolated darkened cell.
Herzog’s rasping, lilting, inscrutably sibilant and sinister voice, a vital part of all his documentaries and the various villains he’s played on screen for other directors, is described by him as having
the South German twang of my first language, Bavarian. And I accept too that I speak English with a strong accent, maybe not so strong as Henry Kissinger’s.
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