The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (German: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, literally Every Man for Himself and God Against All) won the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes 1975 — the first major international recognition of Herzog's work, which had until then circulated principally in German art-house programming.

The lead, Bruno S. — born Bruno Schleinstein in 1932 — was a Berlin street musician and trained metal worker with a complex personal history of institutional confinement. Herzog had encountered him through the documentary Bruno der Schwarze – Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn by Lutz Eisholz and cast him directly in the role with no acting training. Herzog would work with Bruno again three years later on Stroszek; Bruno never appeared in any other film and continued his street-music career in West Berlin until his death in 2010.

The film is loosely based on the real historical case of Kaspar Hauser, the young man who appeared in Nuremberg in May 1828 with a letter introducing himself and claiming to have been raised in confinement. The Hauser case was one of the most discussed European mysteries of the nineteenth century and has been the subject of dozens of subsequent investigations, novels, plays and films. Cinematography is by Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein and the score draws principally on Pachelbel's Canon, used at Cannes in the same year that Robert Redford's Ordinary People would later popularise it for American audiences.