Review: How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)
How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck must be the definitive documentary about auctioneering. Werner Herzog propels us into a world of verbal gymnastics where yodelling, freestyle MC’ing and race announcing seem to intersect in a million-mile an hour syllabic drone. The livestock auctioneer’s mantra can sound unintelligible to the untrained ear, and thankfully a world champion auctioneer gives us a primer early on, in the basics of the Auction Chant, or what Herzog calls ‘the poetry of capitalism’.
The guidance won’t help you much though, it remains nigh impossible to decipher what each contestant in the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship is actually saying. But it’s also largely irrelevant. What will strike you most about the competitors is not the content of their monologues, but rather their differing styles and methods of delivery and dare I say, ‘crowd control’. Things do get slightly repetitive as Werner inflicts performance after performance on us, however you do find yourself barracking for one contestant or another. Like many other documentaries, How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck thematically concerns itself with America’s obsession for such competitiveness.
Interestingly, in the commentary for Herzog’s Stroszek, he mentions he originally met two of the actors as auctioneers in How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck.
Titicut Rating: 3.5 / 5
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Huie’s Sermon is almost entirely comprised of footage from a single sermon at the Bible Way Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ church in Brooklyn. Apart from the closing shot of Bishop Huie, the film is entirely faithful to the observational form – it contains only two judiciously placed cutaways which show us the deserted ghetto slumland outside.