Kinski

Huit ans après la mort de Klaus Kinski (1926-1991), le cinéaste Werner Herzog consacre un film à ses rapports avec son acteur fétiche. Des rapports hors norme, faits d'amour et de haine, de triomphes artistiques et de disputes meurtrières. On voit ici des séquences inoubliables, hilarantes et tragiques, au-delà de tout ce que l'on croyait savoir sur la violence d'un tournage. Dans une scène délicieuse, Herzog revient dans un appartement où il a vécu autrefois avec Kinski. Sous les yeux effarés des propriétaires actuels, un couple de braves bourgeois, le cinéaste arpente les pièces et raconte les crises de colère de l'acteur : "Ici, il a démoli la salle de bains…" Un cran de plus est franchi avec les souvenirs des tournages épiques en Amérique du Sud. Werner Herzog raconte l'inoubliable séquence d'ouverture d'Aguirre, montre des rushes inédits de Fitzcarraldo, confronte les images finales avec les crises de l'acteur sur le plateau…

For Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of F.W. Murnau's classic 1922 silent horror-fest Nosferatu, star Klaus Kinski adopts the same makeup style used by Murnau's leading man Max Schreck. Yet in the Herzog version, the crucial difference is that Nosferatu becomes more and more decayed and desiccated as the film progresses. Essentially a retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Nosferatu the Vampyre traces the blood-sucking progress of the count as he takes over a small German village, then attempts to spread his influence and activities to the rest of the world. All that prevents Dracula from continuing his demonic practices is the self-sacrifice of Lucy Harker, played by Isabelle Adjani. Director Werner Herzog used the story to parallel the rise of Nazism. The film was lensed in the Dutch towns of Delft and Scheiberg.

Berlin, Deutschlandhalle, November 20 th 1971. Kinski emerges into a lone spotlight on an empty stage. Shoulder length hair, plain jeans, a shirt with flower and polka dot patterns. No set, no stage effects, no costume. By reciting his own version of the New Testament's “Jesus Christ Saviour”, he realizes a project well over 10 years in the making.
It is the time of the Hippie movement, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” is celebrating a sensational success in Germany as well. It is also a time of nonviolent resistance.
But Kinski's JESUS is not some Hippie Happening. It is to be a highly emotional, highly personal recount of “mankind's most exciting story: The Story of Jesus Christ…the freest and most modern of all men, who prefers to be massacred rather than fester alive with all the others. About a man who is the way we all would like to be. You and I”.

In their final collaboration, Werner Herzog directs Klaus Kinski in the remarkable tale of Francisco Manoel da Silva, the flamboyant 19 century of Brazilian bandit known as Cobra Verde. When owner of a sugar plantation unknowingly hires the barefoot, gun-toting thief to keep his slaves in check, he gets more than he bargained for as Cobra Verde, in short order, impregnates all of his boss’s daughters. In revenge, he is sent on an impossible and deadly mission to sail to the West Coast of Africa and re-open the slave trade. Not only does Cobra Verde succeed at this he goes on to lead an unstoppable army of women in a savage war against the local king! Filmed on location with a cast of hundreds, Cobra Verde is a tale of adventure, greed and betrayal. It’s the story of two worlds in collision, and of the man who was trapped between them. Anchor Bay

The feared bandit Cobra Verde is hired by a plantation owner to supervise his slaves. After the owner suspects Cobra Verde of consorting with his young daughters, the owner wishes him gone. Rather than kill him,the owner sends Cobra Verde to Africa. The only white man in the area, Cobra Verde finds himself the victim of torture and humiliation. Later, he trains soldiers in a rebel army. Far from home, Cobra Verde is on the edge of madness.

In Roman Polanski's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Nastassja Kinski plays Tess, a poor British… peasant girl sent to live with her distant and wealthy relatives, the D'Urbervilles. Though Tess' father had hoped that the girl would be permitted a portion of the D'Urberville riches, he is in for a major disappointment: Tess' new housemates are not D'Urbervilles at all, but a social-climbing family that has bought the name. Tess won three Oscars, including a Best Cinematography statuette for the late Geoffrey Unsworth and his successor Ghislain Cloquet. The film also served to catapult Nastassja Kinski to stardom.