100 Secret Heroes Of Cinema Part Four: Klaus Kinski
A glance at the quotes attributed to Klaus Kinski on imdb.com are as instructive as to the man’s character as anything could be:
“One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.”
"I'd have been better than Adolf Hitler. I could've delivered his speeches a lot better. That's for certain."
"I choose films with the shortest schedule and the most money."
Of Polish-German heritage, Kinski was born into poverty and spent much of his early life in Berlin and much of WWII as a POW. He gravitated to the theatre shortly afterwards as it apparently fed his passion for performing as well as supplying him with a continuous stream of young women. Whether his ardour for performance was greater than his ardour for the opposite sex is debatable and the description of him in one review of his autobiography as a “Walking appetite” is apt.
Though seemingly most comfortable in solo performances and incredibly critical of those that he deigned to work with, Kinski seems to have been entirely undiscerning when it came to accepting film roles. His appearance - generally ghoulish and bug-eyed - made him stand out in any scene he was in, to say nothing of his often wild, energetic performances. Unsurprisingly this made him much in demand as a villain and his place in world cinema may well have been no more than a footnote if it hadn’t been for a series of collaborations with director Werner Herzog. Though every one of his performances in these films is nothing less than a mesmerising tour-de-force, he was dismissive of most of them and variously described Herzog himself as a cretin, coward, a sadist and a murderer!
Again, Kinski puts this across better in his own words:
"Now I absolutely despise the murderer Herzog. I tell him to his face that I want to see him perish like the llama he executed. He should be thrown to the crocodiles alive! An anaconda should throttle him slowly! The sting of a deadly spider should paralyze him! His brain should burst from the bite of the most poisonous of all snakes! Panthers shouldn't slit his throat open with their claws, that would be too good for him! No. Big red ants should piss in his eyes, eat his balls, penetrate his asshole, and eat his guts! He should get the plague! Syphilis! Malaria! Yellow fever! Leprosy! In vain. The more I wish the most horrible of deaths on him and treat him like the scum of the earth that he is, the less I can get rid of him!"
The first of their films together Aquirre, Wrath Of God (1972) has him as the insane conquistador Aguirre leading a doomed expedition to find El Dorado. In the title role, Kinski seems to project himself out of the screen as a menacing tyrant heading into his own Heart Of Darkness. Off-camera Kinski managed to menace the crew too, threatening to kill Herzog and shooting a crewmember.
Despite continual abuse and threats, Herzog would cast Kinski in a further four films; Woyzeck (1979), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) (in which they would both return again to South America) and Cobra Verde (1987). In each he appears to be possessed by a different mania to the point where it’s almost impossible to see the actor beneath the performance. Asked about his technique in portraying Aguirre, he replied “You just have to remember yourself in the 16th century”.
While his films with Herzog are undoubtedly among the finest ever produced in Europe, he made little impact in English and American films, generally playing a second-string villain - most memorably perhaps in Sergio Leone’s For A Few Dollars More as a hunchback.
Thankfully in amongst a mass of instantly forgotten films and roles, Kinski has left his mark as one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century and led life so debauched as to make a Roman Emperor blush.