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Obviously not Herzog's best, but still definitely worth watching. The theme is classic Herzog-- I doubt that any other filmmaker would have considered cattle auctioneering world championships worth their celluloid. At 44 minutes, this isn't really a major work, but as usual Herzog is able to communicate to his audience what it was that drew him to the unique subject. Like Herzog says, there's something "fascinating and frightening" about what these auctioneers do; it's almost like music or "art" but what purpose does it serve? Cattle gets sold as quickly as humanly possible. If the subject doesn't drive you away, give this a try. Technically, it's quite basic, but the Herzog magic is there.

They talk so fast that you need ears like a super-hawk to really decipher what they're getting at, but it's this speed at going about selling goods that interest Werner Herzog so much. He's said in interviews that it's almost like "the poetry of capitalism", as these high-stakes auctioneers, selling off cattle within a matter of seconds, are in a unique little world unto themselves and their small audience, mostly full of small town yokels and Amish. This doesn't make his documentary on them particularly exceptional, however, as it's a little too long and a little much without a lot of human interest; we don't know who most of these ultra-fast talkers are. It is, however, quite funny at times to see them go this fast, perhaps in a sort of detached way (then again, how can one who's never been to a cattle auction know anything about what it's like to see mouths go at a mile a minute).

It's great to see when he's interviewing one guy and he starts explaining how he auctions, and at first in regular speed soon as a sort of reflex goes off into his ultra-fast speaking voice. I also liked getting into the groove of the competition, as it were, seeing how despite it being still at lighting speed with numbers and calls it can be understood which ones are the slower ones. Although Herzog fares a lot better using the auctioneer in his fiction film Stroszek- Scott McKain is the one featured in the scene where Stroszek's items are sold off in an immediacy that is purely staggering and, as it's so unexpected following the pace of that film, is one of the most hilarious scenes of the 70s in cinema- it's a fine little portrait of a group that is somewhat representative of the fun that's missing in more run of the mill acts of commerce. You're not going to see this kind of auction at an art gallery in midtown New York, only in a Herzog film.

For the most part any documentary that Werner Herzog has made results in you seeing something in a new light, even if you don't like the subject. There is always a reason behind anything he has taken a look at. The subject here is auctioneers. I wouldn't have thought twice about a film about men who sell live stock for a living, however having seen a good number of Herzogs films I decided to give this one a shot as well. What fascinates the director is the sounds the men use. It seems to be more music or singing rather than talking;the words becoming a poetry thanks to the cadences. Its a weird sensation. Granted the magic goes away when the film ends and you watch auctioneers at work away from the film, however during the 44 minutes the film runs you are in the hands of a master who makes you believe that music and poetry is something other than what you think it is. Definitely worth a look.

I watched this in a creative writing class in order to gain inspiration to expand into more experimental writing. I'm not sure it served that purpose, but the documentary does have a very experimental and ballsy feel to it. A documentary about auctioneers is a hard sell, but the true meaning (at least what I got out of it) is pretty excellent, that being communication and art is everywhere. The flow and process of talking at such speeds seems pointless(I honestly had no idea what the auctioneers were saying most of the time), but at the same time the judges and crowd are all giving feedback, and even judging how effectively they were selling the livestock, mainly based on rate of speech. At the same time, it was all about clarity. And I think that is what Herzog was going for. Unconventional, yet understandable.

7/10

Werner Herzog's obsession with small-town America continues in HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK?, a short documentary that's filmed during the world speed-talking auctioneer championships in the USA. While there are a few digressions involving the Amish (always a welcome subject for cinema), for the most part this is a static documentary in which the auteur sets his camera up and leaves it filming various contenders, all of them trying their best to out speed-talk the competition.

I was first introduced to this kind of speed-talking in Herzog's follow-up film STROSZEK, and it's amazing to listen to. Watching the contenders practising and talking about their backgrounds adds to the experience. Some may find the lengthy competition scenes a little wearying due to their similarity, but I was never less than amused by listening to these guys doing something I could only dream of.

Rather tiresome Herzog documentary, in which he performs his usual variation on Brechtian alienation by providing his audience with space to think, and then hitting them over the head anyway. The subject matter is the 1976 Cattle Auctioneering World Championships, wherein a bunch of rednecks speedyodel at cows. Herzog would use this phenomenon with great dramatic power in his similarly bludgeoning treatise on America, STROZZEK, but without a fictional framework, the subject becomes monotonous and irritating.

Herzog sees these auctioneers as a major site of American capitalism. Unlike other World Championships, where a skilled jury honour the most successful, this competition is strictly business, the jurors voting for the man they'd most like to represent them. Herzog compares this to the Amish community - enemies of capitalism - in whose town the event takes place. This is an easy jibe, and one that ignores the possible intolerance and repression that can breed in such close-knit groups.

The film is full of such contentiousness. Herzog is a last bastion of righteous modernism in a prevaricating post-modernist age of crisis, confusion and doubt. All his films are made with a firm point of view, offering an unproblematic alternative, but his attacks on convention and tyranny can be rather tyrannical themselves. Herzog appropriates everything. Take, for example, the issue of voices. He interviews competitors. They speak in English, but he talks for them, over them, in German, speaking for them. If the subtitles (another level!) are anything to go by, he's also translating them without due precision, and subtleties of meaning are lost. If his English isn't good enough, it's a mark of his arrogance that he thinks this doesn't matter.

Herzog points out that there is a strange musicality to the auctioneering. He then makes us endure the art for over 20 minutes, presumably to give us time to ruminate over it. So we do. Sometimes it sounds like yodelling, at others babbling dictators, at others raving evangelists. We think about how this 'new' language (both verbal and body) developed, and note the disparity between its local specificity, almost ethnicity, and its centrality to an international capitalism. We may even note the link between the auctioneers and the cattle they're selling, in the businessmans' minds.

All this will probably come to you after two minutes, but Herzog refuses to stop, piling on these yokels whose meagre curiosity value has long since waned. Can you imagine - 20 minutes of cattle moving from one pen to another, buyers whooping, and this insane, ghastly yodelspeak ringing through your ears like a trapped bluebottle. Then - then! - after you've been given time to make up your own mind, Herzog comes along and tells you what he thinks anyway! And guess what? It's exactly the same as what you'd figured out for yourself! Arrrrgh!

(The film has one value though. Canadians really do speak as SOUTH PARK suggested. Which, when you think aboot it, is unfortunate.)

Apparently, Werner Herzog was very fascinated with the vocal skills and cadence needed to be a livestock auctioneer. Here, he and his crew attend the livestock auctioneer world championship and seem to record EVERYTHING. While this might have been interesting for 10-15 minutes, at 45 minutes it was a bit of a chore to stick with this one. Just how many fast-talking auctioneers do you need to hear before boredom sets in--I don't know for sure, but Herzog more than surpassed that. Had the film had more back story and information about the participants themselves, the film probably would have sustained my attention longer. In addition, a few little vignettes could have been expanded--such as Herzog and the Quakers trying to communicate in German together. I am no expert on German language, but I could tell that the two languages had diverged considerably over the centuries and I wish this segment had been a bit longer. Or, perhaps he and his folks could have interviewed some of the members of the audience or the auctioneers' families. All I know is that it just felt way over-long.

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)

** (out of 4)

Werner Herzog documentary about cattle auctioneers is rather strange to say the least. We really don't learn anything about the actual auctioneers except how they got into the business. It seems Herzog's main interest is just listening to them speak their fast talk and asking them what it means when they say it slowed down.

I've seen quite a few of Herzog's documentaries and this one isn't the best but he has many great ones out there.

You can buy this film from Herzog's website.

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck? is a typically strange documentary from German film-maker Werner Herzog. His films practically always focus on the fringes of society. Strange characters and unusual topics abound. This film is no different. It takes place at the 1976 World Championship of Livestock Auctioneering held in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In this contest contestants compete to see who can talk the fastest, as they auction a succession of cattle at super-fast speeds.

This is a very basic film not only in terms of technique but also with regard to content. It really is not about the people themselves but solely about the fast talking, the way it sounds, the way it has a certain rhythm. To an average listener these people speak a mystifying language that sounds like comical nonsense. It's funny because no one finds it funny – everybody at the show takes it completely at face value and completely normal and clearly understand this bizarre and seemingly unintelligible form of communication. As is normal for him, Herzog does not make fun of his documentary subjects and, in this case, simply observes. It's quite funny up to a point but overlong and repetitive given that the vast majority of it is simply a succession of auctioneers talking at high speed. The lack of material makes it almost quite an abstract documentary, one which is not so much about informing the viewer and more about engaging their senses. How much this will work for you is entirely down to what extent you get into the rhythms of these fast talking auctioneers. I personally found it amusing up to a point but a bit tedious at the same time.

Werner Herzog paints himself into a corner with this overlong (44 minutes) documentary about an auctioneer's competition at a major Midwestern fair. By focusing only on this topic it moves from fascinating to interesting to boring in less time than it would to auction a couple of heifers. The film diverts and becomes disjointed when it abruptly switches to a montage of the local Amish population accompanied by the strains of Country Road. Then its back to the competition for over fifteen minutes of auctioning. It is an ordeal.

We can all benefit from Werner Herzog's fascination and keen interest in the world at large. His topics tend toward the odd and esoteric and their are moments in his films, both fiction and documentary, where you get the feeling your both learning at the same time. There is no condescension just interest in finding something out. In Woodchuck, however he seems more like a tourist than documentary film maker. As part of a larger film, say on the entire fair, it would have made a valuable contribution (as well as the Amish angle) but alone it wears out its welcome in under fifteen minutes.

I had to shake my head in wonder for 45 minutes. This has to be one of the most bizarrely motivated documentaries I have ever seen. It documents an auctioneer's contest. And believe me, we have to sit through the whole routines of every contestant, a death march of blather.

Its not that he's making fun of this American "institution." He really is fascinated by this and had the winner here appear in "Bruno S," in a fabricated part. And he has on numerous times commented on how he finds this hypnotizing. The interesting part of the film is not in the film; that's amazingly boring. Its in the wonder of why this German filmmaker, this sometimes genius who had by then made one of the best two dozen films in history, this risktaker, this idealist – why he would spend his time and ours on this. If it were 45 minutes of dirt and clouds, I might understand, but this?

There are a few transcendental moments that he's caught, The context is in Amish country, and he had a crew, so before we begin the contest proper, he shows us some of these people. Now that's the Herzog we know and love. Some of these faces are worth cherishing, especially the women: and one little girl, so cleanly groomed, with hair so perfectly and carefully combed back in an ultramodest style. Except, except for one twist that you know requires an artist to create and wear. A whole life of creativity in that one movement on a patient cherub's head.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.