The last film on which director Werner Herzog collaborated with actor
Klaus Kinski, ‘Cobra Verde’, like ‘Aguirre: Wrath of God’ and ‘Fitzcarraldo’,
features a European in conflict with hostile conditions in the colonies, a battle
for survival that mirrored the famously fractious relationship between the two
men.
Kinski, wild-eyed, wild-haired
and utterly magnetic, is Cobra Verde, a wandering outlaw whose very name can
inspire terror in the inhabitants of an entire Brazilian town in the opening
scene. ‘Hide the children!’ people scream when he walks onto the plaza.
Impressed by his icy demeanour, the owner of a sugar plantation makes him a
slave overseer but lives to regret his decision when Cobra Verde goes on to
impregnate all three of his daughters.
The owner plots with local dignitaries to rid Brazil of Cobra Verde by
sending him across the sea to round up slaves in a colony in Africa.
Shot on
location in Brazil, Colombia and Ghana, the plot of Cobra Verde is simple and low on incident.
Much of the film’s power stems from Herzog’s long shots of jungle and mountain,
of scenes featuring masses of Africans, walking in lines that stretch for miles
or taking part in ritual celebrations. Kinski has one of the great faces in
cinema and for all his professed misgivings about working with him, Herzog is
clearly happy to let the camera linger on the actor’s granite features. His appearance - long blond hair, bulging
eyes, scowling mouth and full uniform - stands in marked contrast with the naked
Africans, and, together with Popol Vuh’s eerie electronica soundtrack, this
serves to accentuate the sense of an unbridgeable divide between two cultures. What the two civilisations do appear to share
is a complete lack of sentimentality.
Though not as celebrated as ‘Aguirre: Wrath of
God’ or ‘Fitzcarraldo’, ‘Cobra Verde’ has its own sense of brutal grandeur and
contains images of intense beauty that will sear themselves into the memory of
the viewer.
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