The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) on Netflix
NR19741h 50mBiographyDramaHistory
Kaspar Hauser spends seventeen years chained in a tiny cellar, with a toy horse and a man in a black overcoat who feeds him. In 1828 the man leaves him in Nuremberg.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.6/1020,553 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
In a cellar where he has been chained since childhood, Kaspar Hauser knows no human contact except a man in a black overcoat and top hat who brings him food, and nothing to occupy him but a toy horse. In 1828 the man leads him out, gives him a few words and a way of walking, and abandons him in Nuremberg. There he becomes an object of curiosity and is put on show in a circus, until Professor Georg Friedrich Daumer takes him in and patiently works to transform him. Kaspar learns to read and write, arrives at his own approaches to logic and religion, and takes his greatest pleasure in music. Academics, clergy and nobility take an interest in him.
Cast
- Enno Patalasas Pastor Fuhrmann
- Volker Elis Pilgrimas Pastor #2
- Gloria Doeras Frau Hiltel
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Werner Herzog discovered Bruno Schleinstein in a documentary about street musicians and cast him as Kaspar Hauser despite his having no acting training; Schleinstein was 41 at the time of filming, while the character and the historical Hauser were 17.
- Bruno Schleinstein stayed in costume for the entire duration of the production, even after each day's shooting was done, and Herzog once found him sleeping on the floor by the door of his hotel room, still in costume.
- The film follows the real Kaspar Hauser story closely, using the text of actual letters found with him, and its characters Professor Daumer and Lord Stanhope are based on the historical Georg Friedrich Daumer and Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope.
