A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Klaus Kinski is one of my favorite actors in theory. The dozen or so film I have seen with him in them I have loved, mostly his films with director Werner Herzog and a number of Spaghetti Westerns. That being said he has made over 100 films and I wouldn’t even know where to start. The films I have seen though blew me away. The 5 films he made with Herzog are generally considered the best of his long career. I got in to both Herzog and Kinski after watching a documentary Herzog made about their “friendship” during those five films called “My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski”. They had a tumultuous relationship at best. On top of film acting Kinski was in many, many plays and wrote one of the most insane books that I have ever read. He also went on public speaking tours where he would just scream at the audience about Jesus. He also claims to have had sex with both his mother and his daughter (Natasha Kinski). Total fucking nut job, unbelievable actor. Keep reading to find out my three favorite Kinski scenes of all time.

1. Aguirre: The Wrath Of God – 1972
The first time Herzog and Kinski worked together it was a great success. They mad what is arguably the best movie of their careers. Kinski plays Aguirre a man determined to find El Dorado the city of Gold. He leads his men through the jungle to their deaths. After they have lost nearly everything including his daughter Aguirrre floats down a river on a raft full of monkeys and what is remaining of his crew Aguirre goes mad and explains the wrath of God to the monkeys. Unfortunately I could not find a subtitled clip, but I don’t think the words are as important as the way they are delivered. It is still one of the most powerful scenes ever captured on film.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy05p4bpUO0[/youtube]

2. The Great Silence – 1968
This film is one of the best Spaghetti Westerns I have ever seen and has one of the best endings of any film ever. Luckily I found the last 7 minutes of the film online so you get to dig on it. Big time spoilers ahead. Kinski plays the bad guy in this. He is a bounty hunter who has captured an entire town that has a wrongly placed bounty on their heads. The hero of the film, Silenzio has been hurt, but he must save the towns people who Kinski has trapped at a bar. Silenzio gets shot, but he is about to pull his gun one last time and save the day right? Not if our pal Klaus has anything to do with it… watch this shit.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRV2N62MkbE[/youtube]

3. My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski – 1999
No, that is not a typo. It is my best Fiend. Starting immediately Aguierre there were problems between the two men. During the film Kinski threatened to walk off the set and Herzog may or may not have held a gun to Kinski to keep him acting. What is fact is that both men tried to have the other killed at different points in their lives. They despised each other and were often close friends. Despite their hatred they continued to work together because they knew they got the best work out of each other. Fiend is an admittedly biased look at their relationship directed by Herzog after Kinski’s death. It is the film that got me into both men, even though I had seen some Herzog before. Below is a clip of one of Kinksi’s many outbursts on the set of Fitzcarraldo my favorite of the five Herzog/Kinski films.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yITx7txr-7M[/youtube]

Comments (2)