Cobra Verde
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Cobra Verde |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1987 |
| length | 106 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Werner Herzog |
| script |
Bruce Chatwin , Werner Herzog |
| production | Lucki Stipetic |
| music | Popol Vuh |
| camera | Viktor Ruzicka |
| cut | Maximiliane Mainka |
| occupation | |
| |
Cobra Verde is a German feature film from 1987. It is the fifth and last collaboration between director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski .
content
The basis of the film is the book The Viceroy of Ouidah by the writer Bruce Chatwin , who in turn was inspired by a travelogue from the 19th century. A desperado named Da Silva becomes a feared bandit in Brazil , commonly known as Cobra Verde. His decisive, formidable behavior is noticed by a sugar baron who appoints him to be the overseer of his plantation slaves. After Da Silva has impregnated his three underage daughters, he is sent on a trip to Africa, where he is supposed to exchange new slaves. This trip, from which the troublemaker is not supposed to return, is a success, however, as Da Silva succeeds in impressing the local authorities with a self-confident demeanor and in embarking slaves to Brazil for his clients.
However, the mad king of Dahomey , today's Benin , had him kidnapped to his court shortly afterwards, where he was involved in an uprising of part of the court against the despot and, as the leader of an Amazon army, helped to conquer the throne. As a thank you for his help, Da Silva is appointed viceroy . However, since the slave trade in the motherland Brazil is finally stopped shortly afterwards, the new king no longer benefits from him and drives him out of his domicile. Da Silva finally dies, completely abandoned and finally failed, while trying to flee from the African continent to nowhere with the help of a dugout canoe .
Differences to the novel
Werner Herzog doesn't start his film until the third chapter of the novel. The portrait of Francisco Manoel da Silva's descendants in Benin is omitted. Instead, the lonely migrant worker Da Silva is given a bandit image. In Bruce Chatwin's novel, the barefoot bandit Cobra Verde is just a fleeting, anonymous guest with whom Da Silva shares his meat. Herzog merges both personalities into one in order to later have an excuse to send Da Silva into exile in Dahomey. The character of the business partner Joaquim Coutinho is not present in the film. He is the son of Colonel Octavio Coutinho, who is indebted and in need of care, and the guarantor of Da Silva's phased prosperity in Dahomey, which Werner Herzog probably could not or did not want to show due to a production budget that was too tight. Da Silva has a miserable existence in the film. The plot actually spans several decades, and he always wears the same uniform.
background
The film polarized the opinions of both film critics and the public, with the former receiving mostly poor ratings. The critic Hellmuth Karasek described the film in issue 49/1987 of the Spiegel as “a dirty piece of male fantasy, a rickety manhood, ridden on the Kinski ferry”.
In his review in the 01/1988 issue of the magazine, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt specifically described the film as a connection to the past, namely to the triumph of Leni Riefenstahl's will .
The lexicon of international films writes: "The lavish film gambled away the interesting topic of the novel as a result of excessive self-irony and visual effects - but above all because of the unbearably eccentric self-portrayal of the title hero."
The film is, as Werner Herzog himself says, “not politically correct”, but shows an aspect of slavery that is usually not dealt with in films, namely that there were black rulers in Africa who sold blacks to whites.
The parts of the film set in Brazil were shot near Cali , in La Guajira and in the small town of Villa de Leyva in Colombia , the African scenes in Ghana . The slave fort that is the focus of the film is actually in Elmina . The Abume Royal Palace was built from clay and plaster about ten kilometers outside of Tamale especially for the film . During the shooting, the now legendary conflict between director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski, from whose outbursts of anger the entire film team suffered, reached its climax. Therefore, after Cobra Verde, there was no further collaboration between Herzog and Kinski. After a prolonged argument with actor Kinski, cameraman Thomas Mauch left the project in the middle of filming, which is why director Herzog had to replace him with the Czech cameraman Viktor Růžička . In the documentary My Dearest Enemy , Herzog also comments on Cobra Verde. Herzog himself saw the film as a work that in a certain way "remained foreign" to him. His impression was that Kinski had already been mentally with his dream project Kinski Paganini and that this fact had already subliminally influenced his performance.
According to his own admission, Herzog tried to create “a real physical liveliness” in the film.
Awards
- 1988: Bavarian film award in the category producer award for Werner Herzog and Lucki Stipetic and in the category award for sound design for Milan Bor
- The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Web links
- Cobra Verde in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Cobra Verde at Filmportal.de
- Baumann Graphik (movie poster for the German premiere, 1987)
- Hellmuth Karasek : The crawl of the master man , Der Spiegel 49/1987
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.filmgazette.de/?s=filmkritiken&id=161 Publication of the specific article on www.fimgazette.de
- ↑ Cobra Verde. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 12, 2017 .
- ^ Peter Geyer: Klaus Kinski. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 108.