NationMaster - Encyclopedia: My Best Fiend

My Best Fiend (German: Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski, literally My Dearest Enemy - Klaus Kinski) is a 1999 documentary by Werner Herzog about his tumultuous yet productive relationship with German actor Klaus Kinski. It was released on DVD in 2000 by Anchor Bay. Image File history File links My_Best_Fiend_Cover. ... Werner Herzog passionately singing a traditional Croatian ode of love to beautiful Serbian girls who he wants to take to Germany to have German babies with. ... Werner Herzog passionately singing a traditional Croatian ode of love to beautiful Serbian girls who he wants to take to Germany to have German babies with. ... Werner Herzog passionately singing a traditional Croatian ode of love to beautiful Serbian girls who he wants to take to Germany to have German babies with. ... Werner Herzog passionately singing a traditional Croatian ode of love to beautiful Serbian girls who he wants to take to Germany to have German babies with. ... Klaus Kinski. ... Eva Mattes (born on 14 December 1954, in Tegernsee, Germany is a German-Austrian actress. ... Claudia Cardinale (born April 15, 1938) is an Italian actress born in Tunis, Tunisia to Italian parents. ... Popol Vuh is a German cosmic music band founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke in 1970 together with Holger Trulzsch (percussion) and Frank Fiedler (electronics). ... October 7 is the 280th day of the year (281st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... This is a list of film-related events in 1999. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Werner Herzog passionately singing a traditional Croatian ode of love to beautiful Serbian girls who he wants to take to Germany to have German babies with. ... Klaus Kinski. ... DVD (commonly Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... Anchor Bay Entertainment: the home video/television distribution company. ...

Summary

The film opens with shots from one of Klaus Kinski's Jesus tours, in which he performed--after his own interpretation--the role of Jesus. Kinski harangues the audience for not paying attention to him, curses wildly, has the microphone taken away from him, and, screaming, steals it back. Kinski had to leave one of these tours in order to star in his first Herzog film, Aguirre, The Wrath of God. This was the first of five films that the two would make together including: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979); Woyzeck (1979); Fitzcarraldo (1982); and Cobra Verde (1987). Klaus Kinski. ... This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. ... Aguirre, the Wrath of God (German: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes) is a 1972 German film written and directed by Werner Herzog. ... For the song by The Smashing Pumpkins, see 1979 (song). ... Woyzeck is a 1979 film by the German director Werner Herzog that stars Klaus Kinski and Eva Mattes. ... For the song by The Smashing Pumpkins, see 1979 (song). ... For other meanings, see Fitzcarraldo (disambiguation). ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Cobra Verde is a film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Herzog presents selected pieces of Kinski's biography. He tours a substantially renovated apartment in which Kinski lived, looks at a film clip of the first time he ever saw Kinski, and presents a large amount of footage from the sets of their various movies. Herzog recounts the heated arguments and sometimes violent altercations between them. For example, the oft-repeated story of Herzog threatening to shoot Kinski should he leave the production of Aguirre. He draws heavily on footage from Burden of Dreams, a documentary of the making of Fitzcarraldo, a particularly difficult film for their relationship. Burden of Dreams (1982) is a feature-length documentary directed by Les Blank that focuses on the chaotic South American production of Werner Herzogs film Fitzcarraldo. ...

The Kinski that Herzog presents, however, is not solely the raving madman he is sometimes remembered as. Herzog has a deep respect for Kinski's acting talent. He also displays a tenderer side of Kinski. From interviews with two of the women who starred opposite him, Eva Mattes (from Woyzeck) and Claudia Cardinale (from Fitzcarraldo), one would get the impression that Kinski was a loving and gentle, indeed a calm man. Perhaps most moving is the final sequence in the film which is a series of shots of Kinski playing with a butterfly in the Peruvian jungle. Eva Mattes (born on 14 December 1954, in Tegernsee, Germany is a German-Austrian actress. ... Woyzeck is a 1979 film by the German director Werner Herzog that stars Klaus Kinski and Eva Mattes. ... Claudia Cardinale (born April 15, 1938) is an Italian actress born in Tunis, Tunisia to Italian parents. ... For other meanings, see Fitzcarraldo (disambiguation). ... Families Superfamily Hesperioidea: Hesperiidae Superfamily Papilionoidea: Papilionidae Pieridae Nymphalidae Lycaenidae Riodinidae A butterfly is an insect of the order Lepidoptera, it belongs to either the Hesperioidea (the skippers) or Papilionoidea (all other butterflies) Superfamilies. ...

Herzog describes Kinski's death as the result of living so strenuously and fully ("like a comet" as he describes it) over the final scene from Cobra Verde where Kinski collapses in the surf as he tries to pull a large boat out to sea. The film, then, is something of an elegy to Kinski, Herzog's dear friend and sometimes foe. Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally. ...

Critical reception

Janet Maslin of the New York Times, admiringly called the film, "[a] captivating documentary, a film that serves as an eloquent coda to their unforgettable creative partnership."[3]. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of a possible four, saying: Janet Maslin is a book critic for the daily New York Times. ... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... Russ Meyer (left) and Roger Ebert, (1970) Roger Joseph Ebert (June 18, 1942 - ) is an Emmy Award-nominated American television personality, author, and film critic who began writing for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967. ...

Jonathan Rosenbaum, writing for the Chicago Reader, was less enthusiastic, calling the film, "The art-movie equivalent to writer-director Blake Edwards's Trail of the Pink Panther. Jonathan Rosenbaum is the main film critic for the Chicago Reader. ... The Chicago Reader is an alternative newsweekly in Chicago, Illinois. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Trail of the Pink Panther was a 1982 movie starring Peter Sellers. ...

Notes

External links

v • d • e

Films directed by Werner Herzog

Herakles (1962) Game in The Sand (1964) • Last Words (1967) • The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967) • Signs of Life (1968) • The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969) • Precautions Against Fanatics (1969) • Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) • Handicapped Future (1971) • Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) • Fata Morgana (1971) • Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) • The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974) • The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) • Heart of Glass (1976) • No One Will Play with Me (1976) • How much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976) • Stroszek (1977) • La Soufrière (1977) • Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) • Woyzeck (1979) • Huie's Sermon (1980) • God's Angry Man (1980) • Glaube und Währung (1980) • Fitzcarraldo (1982) • Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984) • The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984) • Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) • Cobra Verde (1987) • The French as seen by... (1988) • Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun (1989) • Film Lesson 1-4 (1990) • Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990) • Jag Mandir (1991) • Scream of Stone (1991) • Lessons of Darkness (1992) • Bells from the Deep (1993) • The Transformation of the World Into Music (1994) • Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) • Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) • The Lord and the Laden (1999) • My Best Fiend (1999) • Wings of Hope (2000) • Invincible (2001) • Pilgrimage (2001) • Ten Minutes Older (2002) • Wheel of Time (2003) • The White Diamond (2004) • Grizzly Man (2005) • The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) • Rescue Dawn (2006) • The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about motion pictures, actors, movie stars, TV shows, TV stars, production crew personnel, as well as video games. ... Werner Herzog passionately singing a traditional Croatian ode of love to beautiful Serbian girls who he wants to take to Germany to have German babies with. ... Klaus Kinski. ... Aguirre, the Wrath of God (German: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes) is a 1972 German film written and directed by Werner Herzog. ... Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula in Werner Herzogs Nosferatu Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (English title: Nosferatu the Vampyre) is a 1979 film by the German director Werner Herzog. ... Woyzeck is a 1979 film by the German director Werner Herzog that stars Klaus Kinski and Eva Mattes. ... For other meanings, see Fitzcarraldo (disambiguation). ... Cobra Verde is a film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski. ... Werner Herzog passionately singing a traditional Croatian ode of love to beautiful Serbian girls who he wants to take to Germany to have German babies with. ... Herakles (Heracles) is a 1962 short film and the first film by German director Werner Herzog. ... Helmut Döring as Hombré Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen) is a 1970 film by German director Werner Herzog. ... A 1971 documentary film by German director Werner Herzog. ... Fata Morgana is a film by Werner Herzog, shot in 1969, which captures mirages in the desert. ... Aguirre, the Wrath of God (German: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes) is a 1972 German film written and directed by Werner Herzog. ... The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner is a 1974 documentary film by German filmmaker Werner Herzog. ... DVD cover for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (original title : Jeder fÃ¼r sich und Gott gegen alle - Every man for himself and God against all) is a 1974 German film written and directed by Werner Herzog revisiting the legend of Kaspar Hauser. ... Heart of Glass Heart of Glass is an experimental film for which director Werner Herzog had the entire cast, except for the actor playing a seer (and real-life glass blowers appearing in the film), hypnotized before each shooting. ... A 1976 documentary film by German director Werner Herzog, produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. ... Stroszek is a 1977 film by German director Werner Herzog. ... A Still from the film La SoufriÃ¨re - Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe is a 1977 documentary film in which German director Werner Herzog visits an Island on which a volcano is about to erupt. ... Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula in Werner Herzogs Nosferatu Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (English title: Nosferatu the Vampyre) is a 1979 film by the German director Werner Herzog. ... Woyzeck is a 1979 film by the German director Werner Herzog that stars Klaus Kinski and Eva Mattes. ... Gene Scott in Gods Angry Man Gods Angry Man is a 1980 documentary film about Gene Scott, directed by Werner Herzog. ... For other meanings, see Fitzcarraldo (disambiguation). ... The Dark Glow of the Mountains is a TV documentary made in 1984 by German filmmaker Werner Herzog. ... Where the Green Ants Dream (Wo die grÃ¼nen Ameisen trÃ¤umen) is a 1984 film by German film director Werner Herzog. ... Cobra Verde is a film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski. ... Les In 1988, for its tenth anniversary, the magazine Le Figaro asked five famous directors to deliver a short on the theme: The French as seen by. ... Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the Sun c. ... Lessons of Darkness Lessons of Darkness (Lektionen in Finsternis) is a 1992 film by German director Werner Herzog. ... Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia, a 1993 documentary film written and directed by Werner Herzog, produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. ... Little Dieter Needs to Fly is a 1997 documentary film made for German television, written and directed by Werner Herzog, produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. ... Wings of Hope (Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel) is a 2000 made for TV documentary directed by Werner Herzog. ... Invincible is a 2001 drama film written and directed by Werner Herzog. ... Ten minutes older is a 2002 film project resulting in two different films called The Trumpet and The Cello. ... The White Diamond is a documentary film by Werner Herzog. ... Grizzly Man is a 2005 documentary film by German director Werner Herzog. ... The Wild Blue Yonder is a science fiction documentary film by the German director Werner Herzog, released in 2005. ... Rescue Dawn is a 2006 movie starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn. ...