I was watching Doctor Zhivago on telly with my mother one Christmas, the very time of year that innumerable family units across the country settle down to watch that grandoise, historical romance for the umpteenth time. Despite the fact that she had seen it many (many, many) times before, my mum had been previously unaware that none other than Klaus Kinski makes a brief appearance in the film. “There he is”, I pointed out to her, during the scene in which KK appears as an enraged and enchained prisoner being transported to Siberia. “Oh, yeah”, said my mum. “I should’ve known he’d be suffering”.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought my dear old mum hit the nail on the head with that one. The appeal of Klaus Kinski is so much different from that of virtually any other actor you can think of; pain, misery, revulsion, disgust, despair, mania, and frenzy. All these turbulent, maddening emotions are writ large on every twitch and scrag on the German’s boggle-eyed visage. To regard Kinski as a mere anti-hero would be grotesquely wide of the mark, but yet you could never deny him his vast army of diehard fans, each one of whom is enraptured by his vile charm.
As far as I’m concerned, there are very few “cult” actors who can hold a (roman?) candle to Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed. OK, so you’ve got yer James Dean’s and yer Clint Eastwood’s at one end of the fame spectrum, and maybe a Timothy Carey and a Franco Nero at the other, but ask yourself; as great as those guys are (and I love all four of ‘em), do people really obssess over every dark ‘n’ damaged nuance of their worldly existance as they do with Ollie and, erm, Klaus-y? No one can beat Reed and Kinski in terms of lunacy, both professional and personal, and as a testament to this, the most reknowned book on each actor (Evil Spirits, written by Cliff Goodwin about Reed, and Kinski Uncut, fabulously exagerrated by the German himself) have long been essential reading for almost every film fan.
But, why bring up Oliver Reed, you may ask. Well, not only does he provide a salient comparison, but he can help take us to the next point about Klaus Kinski (if you’ll bear with me). Reed and Kinski are both notorious for their excesses both on-screen (nude-wrestling and claiming to be Jesus Christ, respectively) and off (maniacal boozing and maniacal rutting, again respectively). They are also equally infamous for their fantastically long filmographies, both of which are chock full o’ schlock and low-budget potboilers, hardly befitting of either man’s gargantuan talent (a good example of the sort of stinker they’d routinely appear in is 1981′s Venom, also the only time they appeared in a film together).
But yes, both men, despite their lazy and scattershot career choices, really could act up a storm, and both were always on top form when they worked with the director’s who realised their potential best; for Oliver Reed it was Ken Russell, and for Klaus Kinski it was Werner Herzog. However, while Ollie ‘n’ Ken were firm friends (we’ll put them to bed now, thanks guys), Kinski and his compatriot were capable of downright loathing one another… Something fucking shocking, too. So much so, in fact, that Herzog once embarked on an all-too deadly serious plot to have Kinski killed. This, and many other grim anecdotes concerning the two, are brought to the fore in the director’s superb 1999 documentary about the doomed star, My Best Fiend.
The violent nature of this love/hate (but mainly hate) working relationship has helped ensure the fruits of the deadly duo’s labours have acheived legendary status, but even without such a darkly fascinating back-story, they deserve to be there anyway. Herzog and Kinski made five films together, the most famous of which are 1972′s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 78′s remake of Nosferatu, and 82′s Fitzcarraldo. In between the latter two efforts they adapted the famously intense German play Woyzeck, but it’s low-key, and often disturbing, style seems to have cost it in the fame stakes.
Even then, their least regarded collaboration is their final one, 1987′s Cobra Verde. Almost as much of a madcap adventurer as a conventional film director, Werner Herzog brought both Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, two awe-inspiring, if very different, trips along the Amazon river (one increasingly doomed, the other ever-hopeful), to life as dark hymns to nature, and the futility of man’s struggle to conquer it, both leaving an indelible impression on the eye and mind. Such an exploratory talent would suggest that Herzog would be the perfect choice to adapt Bruce Chatwin’s 1980 novel, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a tale which delves unflinchingly to the dark heart of the West African slave trade.
Brought to the screen as Cobra Verde, the title refers to the central character, a wild and feared Brazilian bandit, played by Kinski, naturally enough. After the bandit returns an escaped slave to his master, he finds himself offered a lucrative contract of employment, working as a slavedriver on a sugar plantation. Soon after accepting, Cobra Verde impregnates no fewer than three of the plantation owner’s daughter, and finds himself in some very hot water in the process. As punishment he is banished from Brazil and sent on a deadly mission to re-open the slave trade in West Africa.
Beyond all expectation, Cobra Verde ingratiates himself to and impresses the ruthless King of Dahomey (now Benin), and soon slaves are being sent across the Atlantic once more. The outcast bandit is now taken more seriously in Brazil, and in the process becomes a powerful and influential man. But the King is an erratic, not to mention possibly mad, ruler and hauls Cobra Verde in for a bizarre show trial, sentencing him to death. He is offered a means of escape, however, if he agrees to lead a revolution on behalf of a defiant prince. The fact that the army he is expected to lead consists of thousands of bare-breasted, female warriors, should leave you in little doubt over Cobra Verde’s ultimate decision.
Klaus Kinski, eyes bulging, hair flaying, at the head of an army of screaming, vengeful, female tribal warriors… How could it all be anything short of completely brilliant? Alas, Cobra Verde is not a brilliant film. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very good film, but if it’s generally regarded as Herzog and Kinski’s fifth best out of five, then that’s about right, if you ask me. Lacking the intimate, dark Germanic mystery of Nosferatu and Woyzeck, Cobra Verde has most in common with the savage tropical triptychs depicted in Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo. These are comparisons Cobra Verde can’t bear, however, and a large part of the problem seems to stem from Herzog’s uncertainty over his central character. While the director was intent in guiding the tyrannical, incestuous conquistador Aguirre to the depths of madness, and eager to redeem the delusional, philanthropic rubber baron Fitzcarraldo in glorious ceremony, it seems that he is at a loss about what to do with Cobra Verde.
Much of the criticism often directed at the film is concerned with the fact that it portrays the horrors of the slave trade in a rather oblique way. At points Herzog seems to be suggesting that the rapacious actions of Cobra Verde and his ilk are simply a counterpoint to the long-established cruelty of the King of Dahomey. This certainly suits the director’s often unflinchingly bleak view of humanity, and historically it may even be partially based in fact, but in a film it comes across as a rather dangerous message; that Africa was a damned and dangerous place long before colonialism darkened it’s doorstep. Herzog does at least offer up a typically rich and enduring visual metaphor for the ultimately doomed exploitation of the continent at the film’s end; Cobra Verde struggles in vain to cast his escape boat into the sea, all the while being stalked along the shoreline by an African child, stricken with polio.
With an eye like that, how could Werner Herzog ever truly make a bad film? And indeed, when he’s not pondering over the nuts and bolts of the story, the film is a visual feast. Similarly, Klaus Kinski occassionally goes through the motions here, but when he invests a bit more emotional charge into his snarling introspection, the results are pure gold. So, with talent like that, why is Cobra Verde not a better film? Well, the sets of both Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo were fit to explode from the raging tension between the two as they battered and harangued each other to breaking point. Between takes on Cobra Verde, however, the pair were merely weary and wary of each other, and this reluctance to fight quite as hard as before could well have been responsible for the lack of creative energy on display during this final round. Kinski proposed a rematch however, and demanded that Herzog direct his script for a biopic of the violinist Paganini. The director was resolute in his refusal, and Kinski himself directed the would-be sixth collaboration, dying shortly after and closing the book on cinema’s most dangerous and alluring partnership.
Klaus Kinski was an actor who could give you life’s more distressing and unsettling emotions; pain, misery, despair. Werner Herzog was a director who could take those emotions and sow them seamlessly into a landscape of heaven and horror, dreams and nightmares of being alive. It was wild and wonderful when they worked together, it was even better when they both suffered whilst doing so.
Far be it from me to give an ending away, but allow me to invite you to feast your eyes on the sublime ending of Cobra Verde. Films very rarely look much better than this.
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