Although I was literally awestruck by Werner Herzog's two films shot on the Amazon River with Klaus Kinski, "Aguirre, Wrath of God" (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), I was disappointed by the Herzog/Kinski film of the classic German drama "Woyzeck" (1979) and the (to-me pointless) remake of the great German silent classic "Nosferatu" (1979). I loathed "Stroszeck" (1972) even more (for reasons I no longer recall), and don't remember what I thought of "Heart of Glass" (1976). After "Fitzcarraldo" and the fascinating Les Blank documentary about the film's making, Herzog disappeared from American screens (at least San Francisco Bay Area ones).

The final Herzog/Kinski collaboration, "Cobra Verde" (1987) must have played briefly, but I missed it and didn't become curious about it until I saw "My Best Friend Klaus Kinski" four years ago and then saw a longer clip from it in a special exhibition about Herzog at the Berlin Film Museum (in which Kinski's last scene looped). I'd have sought out "Cobra Verde" sooner if I'd realized it was an adaptation of Bruce Chatwin's first (and best) novel, The Viceroy of Ouidah about an adventurer who becomes involved in West African politics and is put in charge of the slave trade by the King of Dahomey.

On this final outing before Kinski's death, there are Amazons instead of the Amazon. "Cobra Verde" starts in South America, but a very dry section of inland Colombia. It moves to what is supposed to be Bahia (the northeast of Brazil that had the most African slaves), where Francisco Manoel da Silva (Kinski), who is not known by anyone to be the notorious bandit "Cobra Verde," mesmerizes a slave fleeing a whipping and is made overseer of a sugar plantation by its owner Don Octavio Coutinho (José Lewgoy, who was also in "Fitzcarraldo"). After impregnating the three daughters Don Octavio fathered with various slave women, Don Octavio seeks advice from other grandees about what to do with the problem of his overseer (whom he now knows is "Cobra Verde").

The slave trade has ceased, though the sugar barons would like a fresh supply. Their former supplier, the king of Dahomey, has ceased supplying human cargo and killed all the intermediaries. Sending "Cobra Verde" to secure more slaves is a "win-win" proposition for Don Octavio, who gets "Cobra Verde" dispatched to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Africans will kill him. Or send more shiploads of slaves. Or both...

The Brazilian ship anchors off the fortress (Elmina, the transhipment point in Ghana, which was crumbling at the time but has subsequently been restored as the African Auschwitz for mostly African-American tourists), but none of the sailors will take Lt. da Silva (as he has been officially commissioned) ashore.

Eventually a boat rows out and takes him in. In the fort, he meets the only survivor of the garrison, a free Yoruba with a bit of redcoat still left. For rifles more modern than any seen before in the region, slaves are supplied by an emissary of the King of Dahomey. Things do not run smoothly for long (this is a Werner Herzog film, after all), and the slave-trader and his lieutenant are brought to the court of the king (portrayed with considerable authority by a reigning Dahomean king).

There is a rebel prince, and da Silva soon is training a troop of amazon warriors (there were troops of woman warriors in Dahomey, as Capt. Sir Richard Burton and other British visitors reported at some length; reports discussed in Boy-Wives and Female Husbands). The training and attack, both led by a nearly rabid Klaus Kinski, are very vivid. Herzog has also added a dazzling vision of signals, and some astonishing personal confrontations. Popol Vuhl added some haunting music, and Viktor Ruzicka photographed what Herzog choreographed and/or set up happening. (The commentary track makes clear that both with the extras (the woman warriors and the court functionaries) and with Kinski, "directing" was not a matter of specifying what the director wanted and having the actors enact it, but being prepared to capture what happened. Herzog also mentions that the line between his documentaries and fiction films is blurry.)

The Kinski character does not have the obsession or monomania of Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo. He is a smaller and generally less mad figure, but still a compelling presence. As Cobra Verde he is not so much a demonic force as the man-on-the-spot for a demonic enterprise (slavery). I guess there is something of Kinski's clinical manic depression on view here and in Herzog's other films with Kinsku. His character has a number of quiet scenes in which he does not seem about to explode, but with Kinski, violence and madness were always ready to burst forth. Despite being in the business of slavery , first as an overseer and then as a dealer, and very blasé about the suffering of the slaves, da Silva is mistreated by so many people (Brazilian and African) and looks so lonely when he isn't in manic mode that I felt sorry for him.

Watching the movie, there were two scenes I thought run-on and some others I thought were extraneous. I thought what I'd seen was interesting. Between "Burden of Dreams" and "My Best Friend, Klaus Kinski," and the exoticness of the locales of "Cobra Verde," there was enough motivation to hear what Herzog had to say. I felt particularly vindicated that he said that making the movie now, he'd have shortened both the scenes and noting that the scenes that seemed to me extraneous to the development did not advance the story (he also explained what he liked about them and that Kinski's unreliability led Herzog to further minimize dialogue).

Herzog supplied much useful information and entertaining stories. As with the commentary track of Red Beard, by the end I thought the movie was significantly better than I had in watching it the first time. I don't think that this is because the commentators persuaded me. Rather, with a commentary track that sustains interest and a film for which there are subtitles (in this case, there is a dubbed-in-English version as well as the German original, with most of the Ghanians dubbing themselves, but not Kinski, and a version with everyone except Kinski dubbed into English), a second viewing allows greater focus on the images (even when the commentary talk is not about the images). Already knowing the plot and how it will all turn out frees the viewer (at least it frees me) to look more at the whole picture.

The "canvas" of "Cobra Verde" is very rich (visually, the total cost of a quite epic production was only two million dollars, a small fraction of Brad Pitt's salary for the current epic by another of the once "new" German film-makers of the 1970s. The second viewing of "Cobra Verde" with Werner Herzog as a guide led me to raise my 4-star rating of the movie to rate the DVD 5-star (and to raise "Invincible" (2001) in my netflix queue, add "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (1997), and to kick myself for having missed opportunities to see "Where the Green Ants Dream, (1984), which is not available on DVD.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older