version of Popol Vuh the creation myth of the Mayan people, written by Herzog, is narrated by Lotte H. Eisner. Eisner, author of the book on German cinema The Haunted Screen, had praised Herzog's first film Signs of Life (1968). By casting Eisner as narrator Herzog was offering a small tribute to the woman he once called his "most important inner support". The film has been described as follows: The planet Uxmal is discovered by beings from the Andromeda Nebula. They produce a cinematic report in three parts. "The Creation": a plane lands, primeval landscapes unfold, burning vents and oil tanks come into the picture. "Paradise": in the grip of nature and the remains of a civilization, people talk about the disaster. "The Golden Age": a brothel singer and a matron sing. All three parts end with the greatest of all hallucinations, a mirage. Reception and legacy The film was premiered at the 1970 Cannes Festival. Herzog himself has stated that upon its first release, the film was greeted with hostility "almost everywhere". It was released commercially, by the Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, on 19 April 1971. Herzog said "...when [Fata Morgana] was finally released, it was a big success with young people who had taken various drugs and was seen as one of the first European art-house psychedelic films, which of course it has no connection with at all." Many of the images used in Fata Morgana would appear in Herzog's later work: the vehicle aimlessly turning circles recurs in Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) and Stroszek (1977); the decaying animal carcasses reappear in Cobra Verde (1987); the welding goggles are worn by the two blind inmates in Even Dwarfs Started Small; and the image of the temple in the desert is used in Kaspar's dream of the Caucasus in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Herzog himself described the film as "an hallucination". Reviewing the film for The New York Times in 1971, Vincent Canby said: ... Werner Herzog, the young German director of "Fata Morgana", is obviously not suggesting anything as engaged, or as engaging, as a Save‐the-Sahara campaign. His film simply uses the Sahara as the background for his own vision of man's compulsion to corrupt and debase himself, as well as the world in which he lives. Fata Morgana has been seen as a key picture in Herzog's filmography, providing insight into many of his subsequent works.