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Aguirre, The Wrath of God: Widely considered to be Herzog's finest film, Aguirre is the tale of Spanish colonialists searching for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold, in 16th-century Peru.
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht: Stark, symbolic cinematography and intensely stylised performances relating the age-old tale of Count Dracula. Klaus Kinski portrays the Dracula character with a silent intensity, tingeing the vampire's inhuman monstrosity with a deep sense of pathos and longing.
Woyzeck: Based on Georg Buchner's unfinished play, the film is a dark study of a lowly German flunky (Klaus Kinski) who, to earn much-needed extra money, volunteers for a local doctor's strange experiments, which push him to murderous insanity.
Fitzcarraldo: Klaus Kinski gives a terrifying and determined portrayal of mad genius Fitzcarraldo, whose twin goals of making a fortune from the Amazon rubber trade and bringing an opera house to the jungle are a metaphor for the impact of civilization on the natural world.
Cobra Verde: Filmed in Ghana, Brazil, and Colombia, Cobra Verde is a visually astonishing true-life tale about a Brazilian bandit known as Cobra Verde who is exiled to West Africa to rejuvenate the slave trade.
Also includes My Best Friend, a documentary film exploring the relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski.
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To be fair, Herzog made plenty of brilliant films without Kinski- notably The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser & especially Stroszek (both made with Bruno S.).& there are many other Herzog films worth watching- Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Even Dwarves Started Small, Heart of Glass, Wings of Hope etc. But this box-set has the key works- & the odd folly.
Aguire, Wrath of God (1972) remains the definitive Herzog/Kinski film- the tale of conquistadors searching for Eldorado & instead finding destruction & madness is mindblowing. Many of the tales of its production are found in My Best Fiend- making it Apocalypse Now before Apocalypse Now. There are many wonderful scenes in this- the opening Peruvian mountain shot, the absence of the modern world, the head-chopping scene that counts to ten, the boat in a tree hallucination & especially the final shot of an insane Kinski surveying his empty kingdom of monkeys. *****
1979 saw Kinski again work with Herzog after the two fell out- reasons for which might be found in Kinski's suitably deranged memoir & My Best Fiend. Nosferatu, a remake of Murnau's classic of German expressionism, is very enjoyable & predicts masterpiece remakes like Gus Van Sant's Psycho **** While Woyzeck is a fairly satisfying adaptation of Buchner's unfinished 19th Century play- which Tom Waits recent album Blood Money is also based on. Kinski is brilliantly cast & the opening speeded-up shots feel very edgy & pose a notion that both Herzog and Kinski were very punk rock ****
Fitzcarraldo (1982) surprisingly came #44 in Channel 4's Top 100 Films of all time- which filled me with hope (well, until we got to #1 Star Wars...). It's very much a companion to Aguire, & has more madness set on a South American river. My Best Fiend has an earlier version of it with Mick Jagger & Jason Robards in!- anyway, ***** Finally there is Cobra Verde- very well summed up by its scenes in My Best Fiend (Kinksi rolling round in the sea, seemingly lost forever...)- another great looking historical epic adapted from Bruce Chatwin's The Viceroy of Ouidah. It has its moments- think of it as a bonus that is worth a look, ***
This Herzog-boxset is a brilliant DVD-set, an absolute must for anyone remotely interested in cinema & great value when you consider that several of these films were reissued on DVD a few years ago at a cost each of about half the price of this set. I'd buy it for Aguire... & My Best Fiend alone- can we have a Herzog-documentaries set and maybe a smaller Bruno S- set now, pretty please?
The picture and sound are good, most films offering the choice between original German with English subtitles and English dubbing, but the former is always the best choice. One reviewer complained that Fitzcarraldo suffered from poor subtitling - but why watch it with German dubbing when the movie was originally filmed in English?
The films come nicely packaged in six thin DVD cases, each one colour-coded and revealing a picture of the movie's poster. These all slot comfortably into a stylish two-piece cardboard box. There's a booklet with production notes on each film as well, and most of the films have on-disc biographies and commentaries.
Absolutely essential.
Woyzeck versus Travis Bickle?....that would be an interesting answer.
Outstanding.
The mastermind Werner Herzog and the outstanding (yet highly irritable) Klaus... Read more
Werner Herzog stand out from the crowd with his unusual and quirky, strange but... Read more
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