My Best Fiend

My Best Fiend (Mein liebster Feind, 1999) is Werner Herzog's documentary about his two-decade working relationship with actor Klaus Kinski — watch it online on iFILM. Herzog directed it himself, which means the film is also, quietly, a self-portrait of the man willing to hire a monster repeatedly because the results were extraordinary.

Their five collaborations — Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Nosferatu; Fitzcarraldo; Woyzeck; and Cobra Verde — form one of European cinema's most ferocious creative partnerships. Kinski screamed at crews, destroyed sets, threatened to walk off shoots in the Amazon, and once aimed a rifle at Herzog from his trailer. Herzog, by his own account, responded by threatening Kinski with a different kind of ending. Claudia Cardinale and Eva Mattes appear in the film, recalling the jungle shoots with the particular tone of people who still aren't sure how they got out. There's also footage of Kinski in his more volcanic public moments — the man clearly didn't save it for the camera.

What Herzog has made is not an obituary. It's a study in creative codependency: two people who needed each other's extremity to make work that neither could have made alone. Stream My Best Fiend (1999) on iFILM.