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The fiddler's ballad ain't free, Klaus Kinski's furrowed brow is a terrain to match the sun-cracked backcountry. (Dolly out from close-up, 360° pan of wooden grave and rock and carcasses, it might be the Italian Old West except that it's northeast Brazil in the 1800s.) "O bandido Cobra Verde," townspeople flee at the sight of him but the dwarfish innkeeper welcomes him to share a dream of snowflakes like feathers. Barefoot and horseless because he mistrusts shoes and animals, not quite domesticated as a plantation overseer for the sugar baron (José Lewgoy), dispatched to Africa three pregnant maidens later. Reviving the slave trade is his doomed mission, even the former military drummer living with bats and crabs (King Ampaw) is nonplussed by the white stranger's weary bravado: "Aren't you afraid of dying?" "I never tried it." The Viceroy of Ouidah in his frogged uniform amid topless warring amazons, just the figure for one last race to madness between Werner Herzog and Kinski. Sacramental host for goats, a fresh coat of paint for the dilapidated garrison, the proper documentary mysticism for a vision more Conradian than Conrad himself. "I long to go forth from here to another world," the outlaw turned lieutenant instead must face the local monarch (Nana Agyefi Kwame II) who matches his mania with elaborate rituals and skull-themed décor. Aguirre is reconsidered in middle age, so is Pontecorvo's Burn! "I cannot begin to describe this cretinous existence of mine," declares the protagonist with quill pen in hand, he settles on a heart growing cold in sweltering heat. Herzog pulls it all together with a couple of splendid images at the close, a miniature Fitzcarraldo on the beach and the young African beauty beaming wryly in song. "The slaves will sell their masters and grow wings." Hellman is nearby with his own savage poetry (Iguana). Cinematography by Viktor Ruzicka. With Salvatore Basile, Peter Berling, Guillermo Coronel, Kwesi Fase, Benito Stefanelli, and Carlos Mayolo.
--- Fernando F. Croce |