Werner & Klaus

This week saw BBC4 (Auntie's arts channel) deliver a brief but very welcome season focusing on the work of German director Werner Herzog. First up was one of my favourite European films of all time: the inimitable Aguirre, Wrath of God, with Klaus Kinski in the role of the solipsistic nobleman in search of El Dorado at any cost. Herzog and Kinski were both mad as fish by all accounts, threatening to kill each other on a regular basis and often storming off the set at any given moment not to return for days, sometimes weeks. But they always did return (until irreconcilable differences were reached towards the end of production on Cobra Verde in 1987) and thank Gott for us, because we have been left with a series of some of the most original, daring and stunning films ever made. Both men were blessed with genius, there can be no doubt - but it is Kinski who took himself more seriously, often stating he was the second coming of Christ, his ego was so big! Perfect then for roles such as Aguirre and, perhaps more famously, Fitzcarraldo, the musician who ordered an entire steamboat to be lifted over an Amazonian waterfall (a feat which Herzog insisted was replicated on the shoot!!!). Then you have Nosferatu, of course, the late 70s remake of the spine-tingling horror classic, and several others of note. They made six films together in all (a miracle, if ever there was one), five of which are available in a collective box-set, together with a documentary by WH called My Best Friend, made after the death of Kinski in 1999 - must have stuff and the top of my wish list. I was happy to be reminded by the BBC that my suspicions that Herzog was also dead were very wrong, as they also aired two recent documentaries The White Diamond (2004) and The Wild Blue Yonder (2005). In fact he's still a young man at 62! Just shows how potent he was in his prime to have had such a career so young. Must find a biography of him some time. Kx