Original subtitles

First...

...cast the beam out of thine own eye...

...and then the mote from mine.

- Jesus takes off his shirt... - And lets others speak.

...he kneels before the first one...

...washing his dusty feet with his shirt.

I am not the Jesus of the official Church...

...who the police, bankers...

...judges, hangmen, officers, church bosses, politicians...

...and other powerful people tolerate.

I am not your Superstar.

Shut the fuck up!

Come up here, bigmouth.

I'm not a great speaker...

...but maybe some of you seek Christ. But I don't think this is Him.

Because Christ was tolerant...

...and if someone contradicted Him, He would not tell them to shut up.

No, He didn't say shut up.

He took a whip...

...and smacked their ugly faces!

That's what He did...

...you stupid pig!

And if only one of you wants...

...to hear me...

...he has to wait...

...until this fucking scum has left.

If I may quote.

"Thou shalt recognise them by their works." That's what counts.

Munich, 3 Elisabeth Street

How do you do, Mr. Herzog?

Herr von der Recke, I hope you are prepared for this invasion.

Yes, we are.

You do know, that this apartment has a very special meaning for me.

As a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, I used to live here...

...with my mother and my two brothers.

This was a small, rather shabby boarding house...

-...now restored of course. - That was in the Fifties?

I was just thirteen.

The odd thing was that I lived here with Klaus Kinski for 3 months.

Oh, really?

It was a chain of coincidences.

The owner of the boarding house, Klara Rieth, an elderly lady of 65...

...with wildly dyed orange hair, had a soft spot for starving artists...

...as she herself had come from a family of artists.

Kinski had been living nearby in an attic, without furniture...

...just bare beams, and everything covered knee-high with dead leaves.

He posed as a starving artist and walked around stark-naked.

Stark-naked?

Yes, when the postman rang...

...Kinski rustled through his leaves, stark-naked, and signed.

Where was that?

Somewhere nearby.

But he wore clothes when he lived here, I hope?

Yes, but from the very first moment, he terrorised everyone.

There were 8 parties living here. He locked himself into the bathroom...

The bath over there...

- Wasn't there a door there? - Yes, it led to the bathroom.

- May we? - Yes, go ahead.

This room, to the left, was bigger.

Yes, we enlarged the bathroom.

That's where we used to live, my mother and the three boys.

The four of us in just one single room.

There were bunks. We were rather poor, and my mother tried somehow...

...to take part in the economic miracle but got left behind.

This bath was smaller because our room reached up to here.

Kinski had locked himself in this bathroom for 2 days and 2 nights.

For forty-eight hours.

In his maniacal fury, he smashed everything to smithereens.

The bathtub, the toilet bowl - everything.

You could sift it through a tennis racket. It was really incredible.

I never thought it possible that someone could rave for 48 hours.

They called the police in the end, but they left him in peace.

He was put up there, in a tiny staff room.

- May l? - Please, go ahead.

It was completely different, then, there was a long corridor...

...and here there were one, two, three small rooms.

Yes.

And here must have been a wall and an entrance.

The corridor went along here.

And this here was Kinski's room.

There was only room for a bed and a small night table.

And that was his window looking onto the backyard.

One day, Kinski took a huge running start down the corridor...

...while we were eating. I heard a strange noise and then...

...in an explosion the door came off its hinges crashing into the room.

He must have jumped against it at full speed, and now he stood there...

...flailing wildly, completely hysterical, snow-white in the face.

He was foaming at the mouth, and he moved like this...

Something came floating down like leaves -they were his shirts...

...his screams were incredibly shrill.

He could actually break wine glasses with his voice.

And three octaves too high he screamed, 'Klara! You pig!'

The thing was, she hadn't ironed his shirt collars neatly enough.

Klara had him living here for free, fed him and did his laundry.

One day a theatre critic had been invited for dinner.

He hinted that having watched a play in which Kinski had a small roll...

...he would mention him as outstanding and extraordinary.

At once, Kinski threw 2 hot potatoes and the cutlery into his face.

He jumped up and screamed:

"l was not excellent!

I was not extraordinary!

I was monumental!

I was epochal!"

All this made a very deep impression on me then...

...and that I would work with him later and make five feature films...

You would never have thought that.

No, that was never on my horizon at the time.

It was beyond my furthest thoughts.

Did he ever have any training as an actor while he was here?

He was self-taught.

At times you could hear him in his closet, for ten hours non-stop...

...doing his voice and speaking-exercises.

It was absolutely incredible.

He pretended to be a genius who had fallen straight from heaven...

...and who had obtained his gift by the grace of God.

In reality, it was incredible, how much he trained himself.

At that time, during his poetry recitals, he still had this artificial...

...theatre intonation of the Fifties, a kind of a snorting snarl.

He mastered it to perfection.

And this is where I lived with him...

...and so knew what to expect, if I was to work with him.

...salt-peter, blazing phosphorous...

...in the urine of a donkey in heat...

...in snakes' poison, old hags' spittle...

...in dog shit and foul bath-water...

...in wolf's milk, gall of oxen and flooded latrines,

In this juice...

...thou shalt stew the slanderers,

In a tomcat's brain who ceased to fish...

...in the foam that dribbles from the teeth of rabid dogs...

...mixed with monkey's piss, in bristles from a hedgehog torn...

...in a rain barrel, where vermin crawl...

...perished rats and the festering slime of...

...toad-stools, glowing at night...

...in horses' snot and in hot glue,

In this juice...

...shall the slanderers stew,

Peru, the train tracks along the Urubamba river...

... Kinski's and my river of destiny so to speak.

I wanted to retrace some of our steps.

The first film we did together was "Aguirre, the Wrath of God"...

...which started here.

It was my sixth film and I was 28 at the time.

I had sent Kinski my screenplay.

Two nights later, at 3am, I was awakened by the phone.

At first I couldn't figure out what was going on.

All I heard were inarticulate screams at the other end of the line.

It was Kinski.

After about half an hour, I could filter out from his screams...

...that he was ecstatic about the screenplay and wanted to be Aguirre.

The shooting of "Aguirre" was faced with two pressing problems.

One was the budget.

Aguirre, THE WRATH OF GOD

Today, it is inconceivable that we made the film with only $370,000.

No one was interested in financing it, and what's more...

...Later, no one even wanted to see the film for years.

Kinski was the next problem.

At the time, he had just cut short a Jesus tour.

He had appeared in huge arenas, in the Deutschland Halle in Berlin...

...and the audience merely wanted to watch him rave.

He was laughed at, had terrible fits and raved and screamed...

...and arrived here at our location as a derided, misunderstood Jesus.

He had wholly identified with his role and continued to live on in it.

Often, it was difficult to talk to him, because he answered like Jesus.

In his earlier phase you could watch him in similar self-stylisations.

As Fran�ois Villon, the poor, vagrant poet.

Then as Dostoyevsky's idiot, and later in his life, as Paganini.

What is more, he had been fascinated by the screenplay...

...which had a different beginning from the finished film.

In the script, there was a scene on a glacier at an altitude of 17,000 ft.

A huge procession of altitude sick pigs advances towards you.

Only later would you realize that this was part of a Spanish army...

...of adventurers, accompanied by 800 or a 1000 Indian auxiliaries.

All this was cut from the script.

Nevertheless, Kinski arrived with half a ton of alpine equipment.

He brought tents, sleeping bags, crampons and ice axes.

He badly wanted to expose himself to wild nature...

...but had some rather insipid ideas about it.

Mosquitos were not allowed in his jungle, neither was rain.

After establishing him in his tent, it started to rain and he got wet.

So, he immediately had one of his raving fits during the first night.

The next day we built a roof of palm leaves above his tent.

Still discomforted, he moved into the hotel of Machu Picchu.

At the time, there was only one hotel with eight rooms.

There was nothing here either...

...except for a single hut where I used to sleep.

A native Indian woman lived there.

A hunch-backed dwarf with nine children.

She also had 100-150 guinea-pigs, which were there to eat.

At night they crawled all over me, and that was uncomfortable.

So, I moved in with the Indians. 450 Indians from the highlands...

...from an altitude of 15,000 ft., who stayed in this big barn.

In a radius of about 100 miles, no possibility to find shelter existed.

I slept in there with them.

The last two days before shooting started were rather chaotic.

I tried to establish some order and worked 2 days and nights straight.

Before going to sleep at dawn, for one hour, I told them:

Please, wake me up when you take off in the train, but they forgot.

I had been forgotten and in a white hot panic I realized...

...the train was taking off. I was fully dressed, apart from my shoes.

I ran after the departing train, 200 yards barefoot, across broken stone.

With bleeding feet I barely reached a step and got on.

That was perhaps the most important shooting day in my life.

When I finally arrived up here, there was a dense fog.

Everything was clouded over and it was pouring rain.

You could only see as far as 100 ft.

The mountain back there was completely enshrouded in cloud.

You couldn't see anything, except gray clouds.

There was indescribable chaos.

On top of that, there was a big problem with Kinski.

First, he realized he would only be a dot in the landscape...

...and not the centre of attention.

He wanted to act in close-up with a grim face, leading the entire army.

I explained to him, that he wasn't yet the leader of this expedition...

...for that was Gonzalo Pizarro.

It was very difficult...

...because Kinski simply wasn't the centre of attention in this scene.

Secondly, our concept of landscape differed profoundly.

He wanted the shot to embrace all of scenic Machu Picchu...

...including the peak, just like a Hollywood-style movie...

...with the landscape as a beautiful backdrop, exploited for the scene.

Commercials work that way. Postcards look like that...

...but I wanted an ecstatic detail of that landscape...

...where all the drama, passion and human pathos became visible.

He just didn't understand this, but for me it was something crucial.

A landscape with almost human qualities.

Kinski replied, the only fascinating landscape on this earth...

...was the human face.

After that I removed him from this shot.

I also had the feeling that this scene without any faces...

...would stick in the spectators' minds for a long time.

Kinski raved about my being a megalomaniac.

I answered him back: "That makes two of us!"

Finally, at 11 am, everything opened up, and here...

...on the right-hand side, very strangely, the clouds stayed put...

...and to the left they parted and then the file of people came down.

While we were shooting, l had a very profound feeling...

...as if the grace of God was with this film and with me.

As if I were witnessing something extraordinary...

...which I would never see again.

I can say, that on this day I definitely came to know my own destiny.

2000 ft. below Machu Picchu, the Urubamba flows around...

...the lnka Site and the rocky peak nearby.

During the dry season the boulders are in the open...

...but the water can rise rapidly here by 40 feet.

This is what the same place looks like at high water.

It seemed to me like a metaphor for our turbulent relationship.

If you want someone to be agitated, let him be agitated!

- Fucking shoot! Let's shoot this shit! - The camera won't roll now.

It's an insult! You have to beg me,

...even David Lean did that and Brecht too.

- You will do it as well, my dear! - I will not. -We shall see!

- I will not do it. - We shall see!

I couldn't care less what Brecht and David Lean did.

What was the reason for inflicting this on myself?

At age 15, I had seen Kinski in the anti-war film:

"Children, Mothers and a General."

He plays a lieutenant who leads schoolboys to the front.

Maximilian Schell also plays a small part.

He falls in love and wants to desert.

Kinski will have him shot for that the next morning.

Don't be afraid, I haven't seen a girl in 3 years,

Hey, you! Go away!

That bastard,

Are you coming? I shall wait outside, o,k,?

Do me this favour, please,

The mothers of the boys and the soldiers go to sleep for a few hours.

Kinski is awakened at daybreak, and the way he wakes up...

...will forever stay in my memory.

Yes, we have to leave,

This one moment, repeated here, impressed me so profoundly...

...that later, it was a decisive factor in my professional life.

Yes, we have to leave,

Strange, how memory can magnify something like that.

The following scene, where he orders Maximilian Schell to be shot...

...seems much more impressive to me today.

Now!

- Will he be shot? - It's outrageous, you can't do this!

You have to listen to him, at least, We beg you,

But this is murder! It can't be decided just like that!

Lately it can,

Lima, the airport.

On the traces of the past, I met Justo Gozalez...

...who works here as a tourist guide and has been waiting for me.

He was one of the Spanish soldiers from Aguirre's expedition.

We hadn't seen each other for more than 25 years.

22nd of February, We are suffering terrible hardship,

The men have a fever and are hallucinating,

Hardly anybody can still keep on his legs,

The soldier Justo Gonzalez drank my ink, thinking it was medicine,

I can't write anymore, We are drifting in circles,

Here, at the left of the picture, Justo Gonzalez then...

... in the role of a Spanish adventurer, exhausted by fever.

In all scenes of the movie, Kinski had an intense aggressiveness...

...being at the same time cold-blooded and calculating.

In one of the scenes we attacked an Indian village which we burnt down.

Kinski assaulted the extras who were distracted by the food they found.

He flailed wildly at us and hit my head with his sword.

Luckily my iron helmet protected me.

He hit so hard that I suffered a considerable wound on my head.

I didn't lose consciousness, but suffered massive bleeding.

And without your helmet, what would have happened?

Without the helmet, he could have killed me.

He would have split my skull.

He was precise in aiming at my helmet...

...but always impulsive, aggressive, out of control. Hitting everyone.

And afterwards?

Afterwards, this scar remained. It's still visible today.

That same night, after shooting, we extras were relaxing.

We drank a little and played cards.

Klaus Kinski became irate and aggressive over this.

Apparently he wanted to show that he was a tough guy...

...and with his Winchester he shot three bullets into our hut.

We were 45 men cramped together in there and he wounded one of us.

He shot off his fingertip. There was so much blood, I was afraid...

...that the man was hit in the body, but it was only the middle finger.

The extra's name was Araos.

The trajectory of the bullets...

did they penetrate the roof diagonally from above and then into the floor?

No, he shot straight through the wall.

He hated everybody...

...was impulsive, unpredictable, half-mad. He was not quite normal.

Aggressive. A diabolical character.

He always went around armed.

One day you threatened him with death.

You couldn't take it any longer...

...when he wanted to walk out before the end of shooting.

A lot of scenes were still missing.

And how many sacrifices had we made?

A few days journey from Machu Picchu, down the Urubamba river.

Here, at the rapids of the Pongo, we shot parts of "Fitzcarraldo".

During the dry season, with the water at its lowest level...

...this is quite harmless.

Kinski was a peculiar mixture of physical cowardice and courage.

A wasp nearby could cause him to scream for his mosquito net...

...and for a doctor with a syringe.

I shall never forget one moment, that was right here in the Pongo.

We had managed to drag our huge ship up to here, inch by inch...

...against the current. The water rises 30 feet higher here...

...and then all hell breaks loose.

Both to the right and left, we had fastened 60 steel cables to the rock...

...so that the boat was able to pull itself up with the winches.

All that took about eleven days...

...just to pull the boat half a mile into these rapids.

Then something unexpected happened.

The water rose another 6 feet and the 14 steel cables...

...each with a diameter of 3 inches were torn up with a single jerk.

The boat capsized, laying almost horizontally in the water.

More bizarre, there was a pregnant woman on board. The cook's wife.

The cook in mortal fear...

...Looking for something vertical, jumped on half a pig.

He clutched it and went swinging on this pig.

Later on, he had to endure some jokes about this of course...

Kinski knew about this incident.

We did some shooting here, without any crew on board...

...and the boat was hurled into the rocks with such an impact...

...that the keel was wrapped around itself like the lid of a sardine tin.

The anchor had penetrated the thick metal wall.

Everyone knew it, including Kinski.

I then thought we should shoot with a couple of cameras on board.

We had six volunteers and suddenly Kinski said...

"if you go on board, I'm coming with you.

If you sink, I shall sink too."

Look, you can stop it again... at the beginning.

This is a real gramophone needle?

No, that's a normal sewing needle.

Paul, good luck to you.

If you fall off, I'll catch you.

What happened?

Pongo,

We are drifting through the Pongo!

While we were shooting, one of the impacts was so violent...

... I remember seeing the lense shooting out of the camera.

It flew off, and the camera man, Thomas Mauch, I tried holding him...

...he flew 25 or 30 ft. through the air with me.

The camera weighs about 40 lbs. He held it on his shoulder...

...it hit the deck so hard that his hand was split apart...

...between these two fingers.

What a pity, Klaus, that you ran away before the boat struck.

But that was the whole idea! I'm not an idiot!

We flew forward and the lens...

That's when I ran!

This lens here flew off. -That was the idea.

The rock came even closer.

I ran back screaming: "The engine!"

Then the impact and you flew. Perfect timing.

There were moments, too, when Kinski instinctively knew...

...that he went too far.

And in moments like that he was a coward, thank God.

There was an incident at Rio Nanay...

...that was the last phase of the shooting of "Aguirre".

As so often, he didn't know his lines, and would look for a victim.

Suddenly he screamed like mad:

"You pig!" meaning the assistant camera man.

"He grinned!"

I was supposed to fire him at once.

Of course I wouldn't fire him, or else the whole team would leave.

He suddenly packed his things in dead earnest...

...resolved to leave our location, packing everything in a speedboat.

I knew he had broken 30, 40, 50 contracts before this.

Only shortly before he had broken up a tour.

He ruined theatre engagements and I knew he was leaving for good.

I went up to him, very composed, by the way, I was not armed...

...Later on, he tried to change things around to save face.

I went up to him and said: "You can't do this.

The movie is more important than our personal emotions...

...even more important than our persons and...

...this can't be permitted. This simply will not be!"

He said: "No, I'm leaving now".

I told him, I had a rifle and by the time he'd reach the next bend...

...there'd be 8 bullets in his head and the ninth one would be mine.

He instinctively knew that this wasn't a joke anymore.

He screamed for the police like a madman.

However, the next police station was at least 300 miles away.

The press later wrote that I directed him from behind the camera...

...with a loaded rifle.

Of course, this wasn't true...

...but he was very disciplined during the last days of shooting.

The beast had been domesticated after all...

...and pressed into shape, so that his true madness and energy...

...were contained within the frame of a screen image.

I thank his cowardice and his instincts...

...for a magnificent ending of "Aguirre".

When we reach the sea, we'll build a bigger boat and...

...with it we'll sail north and take Trinidad away from the Spanish Crown,

From there we'll go on and take Mexico from Cortez,

What a great betrayal that will be!

We will then control all of New Spain...

...and we will stage history...

...as others stage plays,

I, the Wrath of God...

...will marry my own daughter...

...and with her found the purest dynasty...

...ever known to man,

Together we will rule the whole of this continent,

We will endure,

I am the Wrath of God...

...who else is with me?

I was with him...

Kinski and I complemented each other in a strange way.

I think, he needed me just as much as I needed him.

Only in public, he could never admit it. It bothered him very much.

In his autobiography, which is highly fictitious, he describes me...

...our relationship. I shall read some of it.

He speaks of Herzog's "derangement insolence, impudence, brutality...

...dimwittedness, megalomania, lack of talent" and it goes on like that.

He continuous: "Any elaboration would be a waste of time."

Nevertheless, page after page, he comes back to me...

...almost like an obsessive compulsion.

In some passages of this book, I kind of had a hand in them.

I helped him to invent particularly vile expletives.

He lived near here, a little higher up, and we often walked along here.

Sometimes we sat on a wooden bench, looking over the landscape...

...or we sat by this tree musing, and he said:

"Werner, nobody will read this book if I don't write bad stuff about you.

If I wrote that we get along well together, nobody would buy it.

The scum only wants to hear about the dirt, all the time."

I came with a dictionary and we tried to find even fouler expressions.

He did use some of them and we often laughed about it.

Yet, a lot of these outbreaks of hatred were certainly authentic.

And this applies to both of us.

Nevertheless, we worked together again.

"Woyzeck" was shot in the small Czech town of Telc.

Eva Mattes was Kinski's partner in the role of Marie.

She was one of the few women who had anything good to say...

...about Kinski.

There, under those arches, we shot quite a lot...

...and on the square out there too.

Kinski had arrived exhausted from the shooting of "Nosferatu".

We had only 5 days in between. He was able to grow some stubbles...

...and he was in a peculiar, fragile and sensitive mood.

How would you describe him? He was different with you.

Yes, that kind of exhaustion can stimulate you to reach rare heights.

He was a very professional actor...

...the most professional I have ever known.

And he certainly exploited this, this fragility you just mentioned...

...which is almost like a gift for Woyzeck, if you bring it with you...

...in such a moment of exhaustion.

I respected him totally, but it was mutual.

I was anxiously looking forward to working with him...

...because I knew him to be a mad actor.

I got to know him as a powerhouse...

...you just had to plug into.

Do you know how long it has been, Marie?

At Whitsuntide it has been two years,

And do you know how long it will be?

I have to go and prepare supper,

- You two weren't merely actors. - That's right.

There was a strong intuition. He was a terribly intuitive actor.

And I am the same. There is a scene in Woyzeck where...

...Woyzeck says to Marie:

"You have such a beautiful mouth, and no blister on it."

The next day, I had a white blister in the middle of my lip.

Never before in my life did I have a blister on my lip and never after.

He saw it the following day and made some vulgar jokes about it.

But the whole thing was very strange.

There was a great intensity between us, or rather he had it...

...and I had it. And I can't describe it any further.

The situation in the film is the following:

Marie has an affair with a drum major.

Woyzeck, drifting towards insanity, has reason to be suspicious.

This scene, like almost everything in Woyzeck...

...was filmed in a single take without a cut.

Is it still you?

Really...

...I can't see a thing,

You look so strange, Franz, I'm frightened,

I can't see anything,

I can't see anything,

One should see it, grab it with one's fists,

What's the matter, Franz? Your brain is raging,

Many folks go through this lane,

You talk with whom you want, What does it matter to me,

There...there he stood?

Like this with you?

I wish it had been me,

I can't keep people from the street and...

...keep them from bringing their mouths,

And not leaving their lips at home,

Such a shame, they're so beautiful...

...but wasps like to settle on them,

What kind of wasp has stung you?

A sin, so thick and broad, It stinks so badly...

...you could smoke out the little angels from heaven,

You have a red mouth, Marie...

...and no blister on it,

- Franz, you are talking in a fever! - I saw him,

Two good eyes see a lot in sunshine,

Did he stand there? Like this? Like this?

As the world is...

...many people can stand in one place,

Dare touch me, Franz!

I'd rather have a knife in my body than your hand on mine,

No...

...something must be on her,

Something should be on her,

Every human being is an abyss,

You get dizzy, looking down,

Innocence, you have a sign on you,

Do I know it? Do I know it?

I didn't know him, privately, so to speak...

... but the little that was revealed during shooting was very friendly.

On the last day of shooting, we took a group photo of the team.

- I was sad that shooting was over. - Yes, you cried.

I left early, because l couldn't keep from sobbing.

All of a sudden, I heard steps behind me and someone said:

"Wait a moment". It was Kinski.

He took me in his arms, and he said:

"Eva, I know exactly how you feel."

That was so wonderful. It did me a lot of good.

I really needed that, and he was there.

He went to the hotel with me, holding me the entire time...

...and he simply knew.

When I got to Cannes, I received, I guess erroneously...

No, you deserved it!

...this prize. I received it and not Klaus. I went to him and said:

"Well, what do you think about my getting this prize?"

And he said: "Eva, I think only of that walk we took together...

...from the location to the hotel, when you cried so."

That was great. He was sitting in the audience, applauding me...

...and he said: "Finally you're wearing a gorgeous dress!"

I had told him beforehand. If they do give a prize...

...it would have to be a joint one, for him, as well. And he said:

"l don't care about that scum! Why should I receive a prize?

I know that I'm a genius!

And on and on. I said: "We all know that.

You never need to get a prize. It just compromises you...

...and drags you to the same level of the media, this whole circus."

That did him a lot of good. He was very loving with me then.

He kissed me on the mouth and held me for a long time...

...and was all broken up and very deeply touched.

There were quite a few moments like that between us.

It's always difficult to explain that he also had great human warmth...

...which abruptly could turn into rage of unimaginable proportions.

You won't tell me whether l can scream or not!

You can lick my ass. I'm going to smack your face.

You can count on it!

I'll kick your ass if you mouth off to me! -Come on!

This quarrel, here, filmed as an aside...

...was with our capable production manager, Walter Saxer.

By some rare chance, I was not the brunt of it this time.

I don't give a shit about your jerking off with your friendship!

Go on making your shit!

The cause was trivial, and I didn't bother to interfere, because Kinski...

...compared with his previous outbreaks seemed rather mild.

I simply continued setting up for the next scene.

- Fine, you won't get anymore. - Pigs' slops, that's what it is!

- You don't have to eat it. - What, you fucking idiot?

Eat what you want.

It's worse than in a prison, you asshole!

- You want to tell me what to eat? - Then no food for you

He's a madman, Lucki.

Take this piece of shit away!

You can eat your own shit!

A lunatic! He belongs in an asylum!

A madman! He's mad, he's an idiot.

Somebody needs to hit you in the face. You should be locked up.

I'm not finished with you, yet, you stupid pig!

How can you let such an asshole run your production?

You don't exist for me!

You better behave like a human being around here.

This is outrageous.

Come on, lick my ass, man! We're making a movie!

And we'll put you in your place where you belong, you idiot!

Shut up!

You bother me!

These ravings were frightening and a real problem for the Indians...

...who solve their conflicts in a totally different manner.

You are so stupid that you are not aware of the consequences...

I don't give a shit about the consequences.

I know! You don't fucking care about anything!

In any case, I don't care about your tantrums.

Nobody can live on this pig food.

Nobody can be so stupid!

Then don't eat it.

Do you understand! I'm leaving! This is outrageous!

- Come on, let's leave it. - Then tell him to shut his face.

Come on, just leave it alone, you two, Walter, you and Klaus.

One of you ought to have the nerve to stop this. OK, let's start shooting.

We need some preparation, I would like to rehearse again.

Klaus, I'd like to show you what I have in mind.

Kinski's raving fits strained things with our Indian extras.

They were Machiguengas, these two here, and a lot of Campas, too.

Normally, they speak very softly and physical contacts are gentle.

They were afraid. They would sit huddled together, whispering.

Towards the end of shooting one of the chiefs came to me and said:

"You probably realized that we were afraid, but not for one moment...

...were we scared of that screaming madman, shouting his head off."

They were actually afraid of me, because I was so quiet.

Kinski's fits can partly be explained by his egocentric character.

Egocentric is perhaps not the right word; he was an outright egomaniac.

Whenever there was a serious accident, it became a big problem...

...because, all of a sudden, he was no longer the centre of attention.

He was no longer important.

Once, a lumberman was bitten by a snake while cutting a tree.

This only happened once in 3 years, with hundreds of woodcutters...

...in the jungle who always worked barefoot with their chain saws.

The snakes naturally flee from the smell of gasoline and the noise.

Suddenly this chuchupe struck the man twice.

This was the most dangerous snake of all.

It only takes a few minutes before cardiac arrest occurs.

He dropped the saw and thought about it for five seconds...

...then he grabbed the saw again and cut off his foot.

It saved his life, because the camp and serum was 20 minutes away.

When that happened, I knew Kinski would start raving...

...with some trifling excuse, because now he was just a marginal figure.

In another incident, a plane crashed, which was bringing 6 people here.

Luckily, they all survived, but some were seriously injured.

There were confusing reports on the radio, completely garbled...

...and Kinski saw that he was no longer in demand.

So, he threw a fit, because his coffee was only lukewarm that morning.

For hours he screamed at me, that close to my face. Incredible.

I didn't know how to calm him down, and then I had an inspiration.

I went to my hut, where, for months I had hidden a piece of chocolate.

We would almost have killed one another for something like that.

I went back to him, going right into his face and ate the chocolate.

All of a sudden he was quiet. This was utterly beyond him.

Towards the end of shooting, the Indians offered to kill Kinski for me.

They said: "Shall we kill him for you?"

And I said: "No, for God's sake! I still need him for shooting.

Leave him to me!"

I declined, at the time, but they were dead serious.

They would have killed him, undoubtedly, if I had wanted it.

I at once regretted that I held the Indians back from their purpose.

The proposal to do away with Kinski came from this Chief.

The rage the Indians felt toward Kinski was exploited for this scene.

Kinski maintained that he felt close to the Indians, but this wasn't true.

He wanted to pretend that he was close to 'Nature's Children'...

...and thus to 'Mother Nature'.

Between Kinski and me there was an unbridgeable gap.

This had to do with his feeling for nature.

He stylised himself as the 'Natural Man'.

I believe that everything he said about the jungle was mainly posing.

He declared everything around here erotic, but he never went near it.

He stayed in a camp for months, but never set foot in the jungle.

Once he penetrated it for about 100 feet, where a fallen tree lay.

Of course, the photographer had to go with him...

...taking hundreds of photos of him tenderly embracing...

...and copulating with this tree.

Poses and paraphernalia were what mattered to him.

His alpine gear was more important than the mountains themselves.

His camouflage combat fatigues tailored by Yves Saint Laurent...

...were much more important than any jungle.

In this regard, Kinski was endowed with a fair share of natural stupidity.

The difference in our views became most apparent during "Fitzcarraldo".

Strangely enough, we reached some kind of tacit understanding...

...which even extended to his ravings.

Sometimes he had an awareness that he needed to produce a fit.

I often provoked him, making a remark so that he would explode.

I knew he would then continue screaming for one and a half hours.

White foam would appear at the corners of his mouth...

...until he had emptied himself out.

At such moments Aguirre's madness would break through.

I knew there had to be a very quiet, very dangerous tone now.

Kinski saw it differently. He wanted Aguirre to start raving...

...declaring himself to be the great traitor and Wrath of God.

Deep down, he did understand me, and hoped I would provoke him...

...so he would throw his tantrum first...

...and then we could shoot the scene.

I am the great traitor, There must be no other!

Anyone, even thinking about deserting, will be cut into 198 pieces!

And then trampled upon until what is left can only be used to paint walls,

Whoever takes one grain of corn...

...and one drop of water more than his ration...

...will be locked up for 155 years,

If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees...

...the birds will drop dead from the trees,

I am the Wrath of God,

The earth I pass will see me and tremble,

Who follows me and the river will win untold riches,

But whoever deserts...

Kinski sometimes seriously believed that I was mad.

This isn't true of course. I am quite sane, clinically sane, so to speak.

Nevertheless, he might have been referring to something in particular.

Together we were like two critical masses...

...which result in a dangerous mixture when they come into contact.

Something that became highly explosive.

I was never out of my senses, but perhaps just very angry.

One day I seriously planned to firebomb him in his house.

This was prevented only by the vigilance of his Alsatian shepherd.

But although we kept our distance, we'd seek out one another again...

...at the right time.

We met at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

At that time we had already made three films together.

We hadn't seen each other for some time...

...and were looking forward to our meeting...

...although I had just shortly before given up my plan to murder him.

Nosferatu -Phantom of the Night

You must excuse my rude entrance,

I am Count Dracula,

I know of you,

I have read Jonathan's diary,

Since he has been with you, he's ruined,

- He will not die, - Yes, he will,

Dying is cruelty for the unsuspecting, but death is not everything,

It is more cruel not to be able to die,

I wish I could partake of the love that's between you and Jonathan,

Nothing in this world, not even God, can touch that,

It will not change, even if Jonathan never recognises me again,

I could change everything, Come to me and be my ally...

...there'd be salvation for your husband and for me,

The absence of love...

...is the most abject pain,

Salvation comes from ourselves alone,

And you may rest assured...

...that even the unthinkable will not deter me,

Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski.

Yes, I miss him. Now and then I do miss him.

There are moments, when he is very much alive for me.

He created a climate of unconditional professionalism.

He used to complain about the lighting and demanded changes.

I can remember that vividly, when shooting at the post office in Iquitos.

Something wasn't quite as it should be and he asked for a mirror.

And as always, he was right.

He never maintained something was wrong, when it wasn't.

He sensed with 25 people on the set...

...when somebody in the back was whispering.

Yes, the raving fit would follow without fail.

It was almost an animal presence that he had.

I learned something special from him, from his physicality.

I later called it the Kinski spiral...

...meaning an appearance from behind the camera.

If you enter the scene from the side, showing your profile...

...and then face the camera, there is no tension.

He developed something.

Standing next to the tripod, he would twist his leg around...

...and this way his body had to spiral itself organically into the picture.

If you were the camera, he would position himself right next to it...

...and twist into frame.

This created a mysterious, disturbing tension.

Come and play something for the men,

He did spiral just like that, I can remember, up on that platform...

...when we were filming simultaneously from a helicopter.

He did it up on that platform, and that was very dangerous...

...because it was well over 120 feet up in the treetops.

Everything was swaying and they hoisted us up there.

I can hardly believe it,

There is the Ucayali,

All the river above the Pongo das Mortes belongs to us,

I knew it, we're going to build a railway tunnel,

No,

We're going to drag that ship over the mountain,

And the bare-asses are going to help us.

How the hell are we going to do this?

Just like the cow jumped over the moon,

We often understood one another without words...

...almost like animals.

And the closeness became such that we almost changed roles.

When we started Jason Robards was Fitzcarraldo...

...and Mick Jagger played his sidekick.

Jason became so ill that we had to fly him out to the United States.

And the doctors wouldn't permit him to return.

This church remains closed till this town has its opera house,

I want the opera house,

I want my opera house!

I want to have an opera!

The church remains closed until this town has an opera!

I will build my opera house!

I will build an opera!

I want to have an opera!

I knew, if I didn't get him, I'd have to change body and role with him.

I thank God on my knees that l didn't have to and that Kinski did it.

We had a blessed one working there, and I am truly glad.

I met him in New York and he was just great.

I was devastated, and he opened a bottle of champagne and said:

"l knew it, Werner, I knew I would be Fitzcarraldo.

I am Fitzcarraldo and you're not going to be him...

...because I'm much better than you.

Of course he was right.

But when I brought him to this site, he saw how steep the terrain was.

His heart sank, and he thought, for God's sake, this can't be done.

He saw it at once.

Our task was, to heave an Amazon steamboat bit by bit...

...across that thing there.

Do you see that red cliff there?

Yes, I see it,

That must be it!

Good, We can't go much further, or we'll run into a sandbank,

That slope may look insignificant...

...but it's going to be my destiny,

Strangely enough, he later became the strongest negative force...

...which worked to break up the project or at least change it.

When the river was swollen and I was sitting in my hut...

...gazing at the river, which kept rising and rising, all day long.

Suddenly there was a delegation, which had been sent by Kinski.

They arrived with tea and said:

"Let's be calm now. Let's think about what we can do now."

I said: "What do you mean? I am the only one who is calm here."

Kinski wanted to protect me from my own madness.

It was clear that Kinski, the strongest force, had now also abandoned me.

Everyone had left me and the loneliness for weeks was difficult.

There was nobody on my side, any longer, who believed in the film.

Nobody. Not a single one.

Only when the boat started to move, which was an incredible...

...mechanical, kinetic effort, Kinski saw a chance to put enthusiasm...

...and energy into the story.

Although I felt a certain disappointment...

...that he didn't fully participate until this point, I held on to one thing.

With all the films we did together: the only thing that counted was...

...what you would see on the screen.

Pull harder!

I can't believe it...it works,

- It is moving, It is moving! - It is moving!

Watch out!

For a really big boat my money won't be enough,

You'll make it,

This here, I remember very well...

...a photo you took which served as a model for a painting.

This was the moment when he saw the painting for the first time.

You can see how we had relaxed moments with one another.

But his mood changed completely here.

Suddenly something in the picture didn't suit him anymore...

...and he exploded and started screaming like a berserk.

Yes, that happened from one second to the next.

He had this capacity for becoming a totally different person.

This polarity that manifested itself again and again.

This became our poster.

Nobody believed, at first, that we heaved the boat across the mountain.

You have furnished the proof and the movie does it as well.

Yes, here's the evidence in black and white, and on paper.

It is a great metaphor - for what, I don't know to this day...

...but I know it's a great metaphor.

Here, 'Cobra Verde', the end.

This is where you show Kinski how to walk in this scene.

In front of this crippled man, yes.

He had polio as a child and you cast him in the film.

You used to act things out for Klaus, beautifully.

We often changed parts. I could have played this role as well.

You would have also been a good Fitzcarraldo.

That's what you are, in reality.

I truly like this very much. It happened because...

...he must have sensed the presence of your camera.

He also just wanted to let you have it, didn't he?

There you are, directing the army of 800 women, Amazon warriors.

Yes, like a shepherd dog, as usual without megaphone or loudspeaker.

Always running.

Kinski was very physical too, but differently.

He drew everyone and l held them together.

That's what you do and you have done it with bravado.

We complemented each other well, because I kept the herd together...

...and he attracted it magnetically.

You can see it in this picture here.

This is him as the leader of the rebellion against the King...

...with this incredible, crazed energy he possessed.

They have taken the sacred python from the temple,

We must turn back, Nobody gets past it alive!

Nonsense, In my country, I was a snake myself,

Out of my way!

Seize him!

Stay back, His wives will strangle him, now,

This scene, where slave trader Cobra Verde tries to flee and dies...

...was the last day of shooting that we had together.

Kinski was completely beyond control.

He already identified himself with the role in his own project, 'Paganini'...

...and brought with him into my film an unpleasant climate...

...something offensive that was alien to me.

Kinski had insisted for years that I should direct 'Paganini'...

...but I always declined because l considered his script unfilmable.

He finally made the film alone.

I didn't want to continue our collaboration.

We parted ways.

In 1991 he died in his home, north of San Francisco.

He had spent himself. It was as if he had burnt himself out.

He had put so much intensity into this scene...

...that from this alone he had emptied himself out.

This should have been filmed at the start of shooting.

In any case, he had spent himself. He burned away like a comet.

Afterwards he was ashes.

This is what I sensed, and he himself said something similar.

He said: "We can go no further.

I am no more."

Sometimes I want to put my arm around him again...

...but I guess I only dream of this because I've seen it in old footage.

We are friends, we joke with one another...

...as if it had always been that way.

And yet we belonged together.

We were ready to go down together.

I see us back in the jungle, together in a boat.

The whole world belongs to us.

But Klaus seems to want to fly away.

Shouldn't I have noticed, that it was his soul that wanted to flutter away?

Then I see him with a butterfly, softly, delicately.

The little creature doesn't want to leave him, and is so unafraid...

...sometimes it seems to me that Klaus himself turns into a butterfly.

Everything that weighed on us is gone.

And even though my mind revolts against it...

...something deep inside tells me...

...this is the way I'd like to keep him in my memory.

Subtitles ripped, spell corrected and Anglicised by gilden_man@yahoo.com