yes again! – just watched it and learned these facts… some funny but some pretty horrific and sad actually

“aguirre, the wrath of god” was werner herzog’s first film with klaus kinski.

herzog and kinski had met many years earlier, when the struggling young actor rented a room in herzog’s family’s apartment.

kinski’s antics during the three months he lived there left a lasting impression. years later, herzog knew the volatile actor was the only possible man who could play the mad aguirre, and sent kinski a copy of the screenplay. “between three and four in the morning, the phone rang,” herzog recalled. “It took me at least a couple of minutes before I realized that it was kinski who was the source of this inarticulate screaming.”

francis ford coppola cited this film as an influence onapocalypse now (1979).

the idea for the film began when werner herzog borrowed a book on historical adventurers from a friend. the plot was inspired by a half-page about lope de aguirre.

the real lope de aguirre

klaus kinski’s crazed performance bore similarities to the real lope de aguirre, a “true homicidal megalomaniac”. many of his fellow soldiers considered his actions to be that of a madman. kinski’s use of a limp reflected one that aguirre actually had, the result of a battle injury.

Werner Herzog claims to have written the screenplay in two and a half days.

herzog himself never was a film student there or anywhere.

gerhard martienzen – voiceover for klaus kinski

the film was originally shot in english. the whole film was later dubbed into german. werner herzog claims that kinski wanted too much money for the recording sessions, so gerd martienzen dubbed him – audiences that have seen Kinski’s other performances often can’t tell the difference.

actress’ helena rojo (l) and cecilia rivera playing flores, aguirre’s daughter (r)

in his autobiography ‘all i need is love’ klaus kinski wrote: “…my daughter in the film, a sixteen-year-old blond peruvian, was fucked by almost everyone, I think.”  sigh!

the complete crew consisted of just eight people.

sixteen-year-old flores (cecilia rivera) who had almost no dialogue in the entire movie

klaus kinski, irritated by the noise from a hut repeatedly fired with a winchester rifle into it. one of the bullets took the tip of an unnamed extra’s finger off. werner herzog immediately confiscated the weapon… and it remains his property to this day.

in one opening scene, when the carriage holding ursúa’s mistress tips over and threatens to collapse, a hand comes in from the right side of the frame to assist the actors in steadying their hold. that hand belongs to director werner herzog.

aguirre’s line “what is a throne but a plank red with velvet?” is an authentic quote from napoleon bonaparte.

near the end of the shooting, werner herzog thought he’d lost all the negatives. several weeks later, he discovered that the shipping agency at the Lima airport had completed all paperwork needed to ship the film cans – but hadn’t actually shipped them.

this film, as well as several other early films by werner herzog, were shot on a 35mm camera that he stole as a young man from the munich film school, a predecessor to today’s prestigious film school ‘HFF münchen’.

he readily admits to the theft but also justifies it with the significance of the films he’s made with the camera and his right to artistic expression: “It was a very simple 35mm camera, one I used on many other films, so I do not consider it a theft. For me, it was truly a necessity. I wanted to make films and needed a camera. I had some sort of natural right to this tool. If you need air to breathe, and you are locked in a room, you have to take a chisel and hammer and break down a wall. It is your absolute right.”

soundtrack music by florian fricke – herzogs soccer buddy

florian fricke, who composed the film’s music, was one of werner herzog’s former soccer teammates. werner herzog explained how the choir-like sound was created. “we used a strange instrument, which we called a ‘choir-organ.’ It has inside it three dozen different tapes running parallel to each other in loops. … all these tapes are running at the same time, and there is a keyboard on which you can play them like an organ so that [it will] sound just like a human choir but yet, at the same time, very artificial and really quite eerie.”

moog modular III synthesizer

the instrument was most likely a mellotron M400, introduced in 1970. It had 35 keys and was a staple of early-1970s progressive rock. (no it wasn’t! it was a moog modular III synthesizer)

boat on a tree

mexican craftsmen built the boat with attached canoe floating on top of a tall tree for the hallucination scenes at the end of the movie.

john okello the butcher of zanzibar

the character of aguirre, especially his speech at the end, ‘anyone who drinks one extra drop of water will be sentenced to 150 years in jail” was based in part on the zanzibar revolutionary john okello. by dd