Klaus kinski

Nikolaus Karl Günther Nakszynski –his real name– was born on October 18, 1926, in Sopot, a free city of Danzig, which currently belongs to Poland. His family moved to Berlin, where the boy grew up in absolute poverty, to the point that he was forced to commit petty theft, for which he was arrested by the police. During World War II he fought on the German side, and was assigned to a position with the anti-aircraft machine guns. By then he was already a tormented person, who instead of shooting at the enemy planes shouted at them to end his life. In the end he was captured by the British, who kept him in the Netherlands, in a concentration camp where he started out as an actor, to entertain the other inmates.

After the contest, Kinski has discovered that acting is his thing, and he joins a traveling company. And although it is difficult for him to work with other human beings, due to his complete lack of empathy towards others, he soon succeeds alone, based on monologues. In addition, he collaborated with great directors of the time who forged him to the point that he became a great actor on stage. Despite everything, he soon moved on to movies, simply because he was going to earn more money. He debuted with Morituri (1948) , a war drama where he had a small role as a Dutch prisoner. For some time he was playing very minor characters in titles such as A Time to Love, a Time to Die , by Douglas Sirk ,Dead Eyes of London , by Alfred Vohrer , and Spy by Order , by George Seaton , until he began to attract attention with his small role as a prisoner of forced labor – supposedly voluntary – who shamelessly insults the Soviets – his shouts of ‘asslicker’ and ‘bureaucrat’ are priceless – in Doctor Zhivago , David Lean ‘s masterpiece. Nor did his composition of the evil hunchback from Death Had a Price go unnoticed. He spent the rest of the 1960s making inferior quality spaghetti-westerns, such as The Gold Professionals , I am your executioner , Sartana ,I am the revolution and others, and in infamous by-products, such as the scary film Paroxismus , his first film directed by the Spanish Jesús Franco , who would direct him again in Jack the Ripper , Marquis de Sade : Justine and Count Dracula (1970 ) , where he played the insane Renfield. Franco is one of the few who have fond memories of Kinski, with whom he got along better than with Christopher Lee –Dracula again–, who according to his words was “an English gentleman”.

In the early 70s, Kinski starred in the theatrical production ‘Jesus Tour’, where he presented himself as the Messiah, and brutally provoked the audience with his irreverence, until he had loud confrontations with them. In 1972 he meets the then young and promising director Werner Herzog ., whom he had met when they were both children, since they shared a boarding house in Munich. Kinski remembers getting a bad impression after his interview with Herzog, in his autobiographical book ‘I need love’. “When he comes to my house, he is so self-conscious that he hardly dares to enter. (…) he remains stupidly standing in front of the door for so long that I have to tow him inside. As soon as he’s inside the apartment, he starts explaining the movie to me, without my having asked him to. I tell him that I have already read the script and therefore I know the story. But he doesn’t listen to me, he talks and talks and talks. I think he couldn’t stop talking even if he wanted to. (…) Anyway, he should break his face. No, he should punch him unconscious. But he even unconsciously he would keep talking. Even if his vocal cords were cut, I would still talk like a ventriloquist. Even if his throat was slit and his head was decapitated, empties would continue to flow from his mouth, like the gases produced by internal putrefaction. The film that Herzog proposed to shoot wasAguirre: the wrath of God , masterful reconstruction of Lope de Aguirre’s expedition in search of El Dorado, whose filming was a madness only comparable to the trip of the Spanish explorer. Herzog shot in the original locations, deep in the jungle of Peru, where the team had to survive in subhuman conditions. This caused Herzog to freak out even more than usual, and he ended up taking a real beating on the other actors, in the fighting scenes. Apparently, on one occasion, Kinski completely refused to continue filming. Herzog pointed a revolver at him and said: “There are nine bullets. Eight are for you and the last one is for me”.

Despite everything, the result was so gratifying that Herzog risked calling on Kinski again to star in Nosferatu (1979) , a revision of FW Murnau ‘s classic , which is the least interesting of the collaborations between the two. They then filmed Woyzeck , about a soldier who tries to overcome the humiliation he suffers from his superior. During the filming of Fitzcarraldo – about a visionary determined to bring opera to the jungle of Peru – a chief of the Indians who participated in the filming offered Herzog to assassinate Klaus Kinski. According to the director in My Intimate Enemy–documentary about his stormy relationship with the actor–, at that moment he was so unhinged because of Kinski that he seriously doubted whether to accept such an unusual offer. The collaboration between the two ended drastically when, during the filming of Cobra verde –about the slave trader Francisco Manoel Da Silva–, Kinski hit Herzog and definitively abandoned the shoot without finishing the film.

For the rest of his career, Kinski distinguished himself by refusing to work with top-notch directors who were extremely interested in him, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini , Luchino Visconti , Federico Fellini , and even Steven Spielberg , preferring to work on other films he was supposed to be on. earn more money. Some were of deplorable quality, such as Nosferatu, prince of darkness -Where he returned to play the famous vampire-, Android -by-product of science fiction-, or the unspeakable Dragon Knight , directed by the Spanish Fernando Colomo, with whom he had such a loud confrontation, that it is said that he tried to rip off his beard with his bare hands. He also played a role in Here’s a Friend , Billy Wilder ‘s latest film .

Kinski went on to become a filmmaker with Kinski Paganini , where he also played the legendary violinist. Herzog had refused to direct it because he had not spoken to the actor again, and the result was a complete failure from critics and audiences. Kinski’s disappointment was so great that he decided to retire for good. He went to live in Lagunitas (California) where he wrote his memoirs.

Due to his controversial personality, Kinski’s personal life was an absolute mess. A self-declared ‘sex addict’ he was unable to keep any of his four wives, and although he had at least five children, he only acknowledged three, who followed in his footsteps as performers, Nikolai, Pola and Nastassja. – the most recognizable. He passed away on November 23, 1991, as a result of a heart attack. The phrase that the filmmaker Fernando Colomo said about his death is somewhat famous: “Let’s rest in peace.”