Kinski, Herzog: In hype's shadow

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I cannot pretend to be bursting with anticipation at the prospect of "Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog: Insanity and Genius," a retrospective series spread across the summer months at the Goethe Institute of Washington.

The provocative subtitle tends to obscure the fact that a recap of the Kinski-Herzog collaboration, which extended from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, is bound to be small-scale. This was an association in which bark always surpassed bite, aspiration overshadowed achievement and duration exceeded demand.

The late Klaus Kinski (1926-1991) and Werner Herzog, 60, were associated as leading man and director, respectively, on five fictional features. The first, "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," began the tribute a week ago. The remaining quartet -- "Nosferatu the Vampyre," "Woyzeck," "Fitzcarraldo" and "Cobra Verde" -- is being revived on Monday evenings between June 23 and Aug. 11.

The retrospective will be supplemented by a pair of documentary features that sound more promising: "Burden of Dreams," a chronicle of the turbulent and arduous production history of "Fitzcarraldo," compiled by American filmmaker Les Blank; and Mr. Herzog's own behind-the-scenes memoir, "My Best Fiend," a left-handed salute to Mr. Kinski, possibly prompted by the favorable reaction to "Dreams." The dates for these selections are July 14 and Aug. 18, respectively.

In addition, the Goethe Institute has installed a photographic exhibit, derived from the inventory of Beat Presser, who was Mr. Herzog's cinematographer on "Fitzcarraldo," shot on locations in Peru and Brazil, and "Cobra Verde," which traveled to Ghana, Brazil and Colombia.

Mr. Blank, a documentary humorist whose subjects have ranged from jazz to cajun cooking to gap-toothed women, will attend the showing of "Dreams" and field questions from the audience. Since he also is a distinctive and venerable independent filmmaker, with a more appealing body of work to his credit than many more successful contemporaries, the appearance will be worthwhile for its own sake. If Mr. Blank can also clarify Kinskian insanity and Herzogian genius, or vice versa, so much the better.

Is this particular convergence of obsessive personalities and combustible egos worth its own summer-long retrospective? One gets a sense from this German tandem of neo-Wagnerian pretenders jockeying for supremacy with each other. The Herzog inventory looks pretty skimpy in Wagnerian terms. There was a certain reckless grandeur about Mr. Herzog's desire to stage historical epics about crazed explorers in remote parts of the world, but nothing he visualized approached Wagnerian musical grandeur or authority.

The most impressive aspects of both "Aguirre" and "Fitzcarraldo" are the Peruvian jungle settings. It takes a whopping benefit of the doubt to overlook Mr. Herzog's inability to give his lengthy scenarios a coherent dramatic shape, but he does succeed in surrounding the performers with ominous portents, evoking a search for El Dorado in the 16th century in "Aguirre" and an overland trek with a steamship in the late 19th century in "Fitzcarraldo."

The lack of narrative variety and stamina makes the films more compelling in scattered sequences than they are as finished sagas. Mr. Herzog never entirely succeeded in creating an eloquent role for Mr. Kinski. In both "Nosferatu" and "Woyzeck" he was borrowing from famous prototypes.