Unfinished conquest. On Werner Herzog’s unmade film project

Abstract

The paper shows Werner Herzog’s unmade project The Conquest of Mexico in the context of the director’s complex relations with mainstream cinema. The film which was supposed to initiate closer Werner Herzog–Francis Ford Coppola cooperation with time became known as one of cinema’s “unfinished masterpieces”. Trying to pinpoint the causes of the project’s failure, the author of the paper analyses the status of European auteur in contemporary Hollywood. One of the main contexts of the analysis is Indiewood, where the influence of mainstream cinema meets the potential of independent cinema and where such directors as Werner Herzog may find their place without the necessity of abandoning their artistic visions.