jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Self-serving, untrustworthy, irresponsible. I had some doubts about this project the first time I saw it, but now I find it insufferable. What exactly makes Werner Herzog an objective authority on Herzog/Kinski? He revisits locations from their shoots, exploits lengthy clips from their collaborations, and slanders Germany’s greatest actor for an hour and a half, carefully defending himself against all accusations. Those endless pages of insults in Kinski’s autobiography, where he calls Herzog “a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep?” Herzog claims he actually helped Kinski come up with the abuse. Curiously enough, everybody Herzog interviews–Claudia Cardinale and Eva Mattes among them–only speaks of Kinski’s warmth and professionalism. Kinski clearly had a red-hot temper, but Herzog’s snivelling self-justifications, disguised as objective and authoritative account, add up to the character assassination of a dead genius. Klaus Kinski deserves better than this.

My Best Fiend. Werner Herzog, 1999. **

Here’s a scene from the set Fitzcarraldo. In the voice over, added fifteen years after the fact, Herzog claims: “The cause was trivial, and I didn’t bother to interfere because Kinski, compared with his previous outbreaks, seemed rather mild.” Really?

[tags]klaus kinski, werner herzog, documentary, character assassination, claudia cardinale, eva mattes, film, 2 stars, untrustworthy[/tags]

Once upon a time in Wiesbaden, back in the dark days before VHS, a kid in my class came up with a business scheme involving this movie. He got hold of an abridged 8mm version of Once Upon a Time in the West (aka Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod), invited us over to watch it in his bedroom on a whirring projector, and then asked that we pitch in five Marks since buying movies was very expensive. The rub: the little scammer had only rented the film–apparently there used to be places that rented Super 8 movies through the mail. Later, he showed us a catalog and wanted to know what we wanted to see next (”Krieg der Sterne?”) But we all felt lied to and the butchered 45-minute version of Once Upon a Time in the West didn’t satisfy, so the scheme dissolved. Soon after, Jochen got the first Grundig Video 2000 recorder, Super 8 became a distant memory, and we watched and rewatched Once Upon a Time in America religiously.

At any rate. In all its unbutchered three-hour gory, Once Upon a Time in the West remains a shamlessly great epic, full of outrageous set pieces and carried along by the sweeping Morricone score. Marcy and I particularly enjoyed Claudia Cardinale’s character who, as the Voice quipped, puts the ho back into “Westward Ho!”

Once Upon a Time in the West. Sergio Leone, 1968. ****

[tags]wiesbaden, jochen, western, video 2000, super 8, sergio leone, film, 4 stars, charles bronson, henry fonda, claudia cardinale[/tags]