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Although at the time I knew very little about hypnosis and it had never crossed my mind to use it in a film, I started to think about the story I had before me, this tale of collective madness, of people aware of an approaching catastrophe yet who do nothing… - Werner Herzog

A Bavarian village in the 18th Century is famous for its beautiful ruby glass. When the master foreman of the glass factory dies without revealing his secret process, the citizens of the town descend into madness as the factory owners desperately attempts to recreate the formula.

This entrancing Gothic tale is most famous for the incredible story of its production. In order to obtain the enigmatic, dreamlike performances he desired from his cast, Herzog had his actors hypnotised before each scene was shot. The effect on screen is both disconcerting and deeply enthralling. It adds to the film's atmosphere of troubling inevitability - the story of a town that cannot break away from its own disastrous path. Heart of Glass is Herzog at his most stylish: a grand mystery, full of the earthy richness of its German New Wave contemporaries but existing seemingly totally outside of time.