Cornell Cinema pays tribute to work of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski

Cornell Cinema's tribute to the turbulent collaboration between director Werner Herzog, left, and actor Klaus Kinski kicks off tonight, May 4, with "My Best Fiend," a documentary about their work together.

This month Cornell Cinema presents a new documentary about the tumultuous working relationship of director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski, as well as two of their greatest films. All screenings in the series, "Herzog & Kinski: Two Wild and Crazy Guys," will take place in Willard Straight Theatre. Admission is $4.50 general/$4 students and seniors.

The turbulent collaboration between Herzog and Kinski is chronicled in the 1999 documentary "My Best Fiend," showing tonight, May 4, Friday, May 5, and Saturday, May 6, at 7:30 p.m. One of cinema's most legendary love-hate relationships, Herzog and Kinski each tormented and goaded the other man into doing his best work, and despite their antagonisms (the director once considered fire-bombing Kinski's house), the films they made together are testament to the respect that they had for each other's genius.

"My Best Fiend" includes on- and off-screen footage from the films Herzog and Kinski made together, as well as Herzog's memories of the actor, who died in 1991. For example, during the making of "Fitzcarraldo," Kinski's star tantrums so unnerved the indigenous Amazonian extras that they offered to kill him for Herzog. The director said no, but he himself directed Kinski from the other side of a rifle on one occasion, threatening to shoot both the actor and himself if Kinski didn't behave. Herzog brought his own madness to their films together; for "Fitzcarraldo," a film about a lunatic who drags a steamship over a mountain, Herzog dragged a steamship over a mountain. Recognizing his role in the volatile yet productive collision of personalities that gave life to his films with Kinski, Herzog says in the documentary, "We complemented one another. I needed him, and he needed me."

Cornell Cinema also will screen two of the most successful and notorious Herzog/Kinski collaborations. "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" brings to the screen one of the bloodiest and most bizarre footnotes in the history of the Spanish conquests in the Americas. In 1560, a band of conquistadors, led by Pidro de Ursua (Ray Guerra) and his sidekick, Aguirre the Madman (Kinski), disappeared into the Amazon jungle in search of the mystical city El Dorado. Although the exact outcome of this expedition is unclear, Herzog weaves a possible tale of murder and insanity propelled by Aguirre's lust to found his own dynasty in South America with the progeny of his incestuous relations with his daughter. With the aid of dazzling cinematography and a mesmerizing choral score, Herzog creates a hallucinatory, hermetic world of madness and decay that comments on 20th century fascism. "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" will be shown Saturday, May 6, at 9:45 p.m. and Monday, May 8, at 7:15 p.m.

Herzog's penchant for tales of madmen and Kinski's gift for embodying them onscreen also are on display in "Fitzcarraldo," which will be shown Monday, May 15, at 7 p.m. Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald -- Fitzcarraldo to his fellow rubber barons in turn-of-the-century Peru -- is possessed with the idea of opening up his own opera house in Iquitos and importing Enrico Caruso to head his company of singers. So he buys an inaccessible rubber plantation, hires hundreds of head-hunting Indians and hauls a 320-ton steamship over a mountain to get from one river tributary to another. The story of Herzog's own efforts to perform the same feat for the film while caught in the midst of a local tribal war has been chronicled in Les Blank's documentary "Burden of Dreams." The final result -- a metaphysical adventure film lit up by Kinski's evocation of the title character's passionate madness (although the actor was sure the film would never be completed) -- is a cinematic triumph.