I will watch every film Klaus Kinski has starred in. As far as possible. His compulsive character paired with his disregard of any quality standarts for the movies he appeared in ("I only do it for the cash and never read the scripts!" he exclaimed numerous times in interviews) makes it nearly impossible to compile an exhaustive filmography, and some of his early work, especially the movies that only show him in bit parts (in some of them he is uncredited), is unavaiable. IMDB claims that Kinski's catalogue encompasses 135 titles. I think that it's realistic that I will watch at least 110 of them. And I shall begin with Ludwig II - Glanz und Ende eines Königs, a tear-jerker set in 19th century Germany at the court of the eccentric King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Kinski stars as Prinz Otto von Bayern, Ludwig's schizophrenic brother. He has three scenes, and appears for the first time 49 minutes into the film.
One of the first German films to be shot in Technicolor, Ludwig II retells a few anecdotes about the art lover (and gay man, but it's never hinted at in the film) King Ludwig. We get his bromance with Richard Wagner that ends in a lofty break-up, his struggle to keep Bavaria a neutral and independent state, his various love interests (chief among them, of course, his impossible love to Sissi), and his descent into (presumably) madness. Kinski's character Prinz Otto doesn't interfere in much of this, except that his first forray into clinical insanity happens minutes before Ludwig was supposed to receive Frederick III to whose unified German "Reich" Bavaria had just adhered. In a fit of typically German atrabiliousness, Ludwig refuses to welcome the new emperor, fires his entire cabinet and retreats to his shadowy chambers where he ponders his gloomy destiny. O.W. Fischer, German superstar of his time who plays Ludwig with all the excessive pathos he could possibly muster up, has nothing on Kinski, who portrays Prinz Otto first with a sort of beaming authority, and later with his unmatched creepy intensity. He makes the most out of his three appearances and his performance is a laudable exception in a film overcharged with kitsch and faux romanticism ("Look at the clouds!", Ludwig tells Sissi one night, "So close together and yet so far apart!").
Which is not to say that director Helmut Käutner is completely clueless. He simply can't escape the "Heimat-Film" tropes that prevailed at the time in post-war West German cinema. But we get a "walk and talk" tracking shot that would put Thomas Schlamme to shame and some nicely staged conversation scenes. When a sitting character stands up, the camera tracks back, anticipating the new geometry of the shot and allowing the character to fill the screen without having his head cut off. Contemporary directors could learn something from that: we don't need a new shot everytime an actor moves as little as his pinky finger. The scene when Ludwig, in another instance of comically German romantic-existentialism, leads his fiance Sofia (Sissi's sister) to the empty opera to show her how lonely it is as a king (while the orchestra intonates some schmaltzy Wagner, no less) is again nicely shot and makes good use of Käutner's apparent love for deep focus. On the other hand, we get one of the most atrocious green-screen shots I have ever seen in my life when Ludwig and Sissy ride their horses through the night. And the exchanges between Ludwig and Wagner are particularly insufferable. Furthermore, Käutner's obsession to use fades to guide us into every single new scene gets redundant very fast.
The script bathes in historic references that must seem ironic to the contemporary viewer, for example when Wagner exclaims that he will die an "unappreciated genius" (sic!) without finishing his Ring der Niebelungen, or when one of Ludwig's underlings, exasperated with the amout of money the King is willing to spend on Wagner's productions, snorts "Parsifal! Can you fathom what that's supposed to mean?" But other than smiling down on figures too entangled in their time to see the broader picture, the script doesn't achieve much. It doesn't work as a character study of King Ludwig II either. Flat and clicheed, he simply rumbles quotes that were supposed to warm up the hearts of the German postwar Bürgertum: pacifism, German culture, pseudo-poetic declarations love, devout nature. Other than that: romantic despair. "We get to share our misfortune", Sissi tells Ludwig after he suggested suicide as a way to solve their impossible situation. It pretty much sums up the film's attitude toward Ludwig's life as a whole.
Not much to see here (especially not if one looks for Kinski), but if one meets the film on its own terms, a good time is still to be had.
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