Signs of Life

Werner Herzog turns 70 today, and I wish him many another year of creativity. To celebrate his birthday, I watched Signs of Life, a 1968 film and Herzog's first feature-length work:



The score is by Stavros Xarchakos.

Slant Magazine gives it 3 out of 4 stars and describes it as "The preamble to Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining". DVD Talk says,

It's not exactly a happy film, but it is quite a poignant one and one that was obviously a foreshadow of the great things to come from one of the greatest directors to come out of Germany in the last fifty years.

DVD Verdict concludes: "Signs of Life is a beautifully austere little film, almost intoxicating in its simplicity—it really gets to you by the end." Time Out calls it Herzog's "most conventional" film. EW calls it "bleakly funny". Roger Ebert has an interview with the director. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 88%.