FILM DOCUMENTARY Klaus Kinski : Jesus Christ the Saviour

Jesus Christus Erloser


Amanda McAllister, Network Awesome, 12 July 2015

A middle aged man stands alone on a stage, gripping his mic stand like an anchor, earnestly speaking of Jesus and persecution. A wide shot intensifies his isolation as he speaks, a small illumination in a sea of darkness. A single unshed tear clings to his eyelashes before beginning the journey down his cheek.

Well, let her continue the story.


Haven’t had much success playing the embedded video there but it is on YouTube. Komplett. 1:23:54 with credits.


Klaus Kinski Jesus Christus Erlöser


Jesus Christ Saviour: Interview with Peter Geyer


Interview by Pamela Jahn, Electric Sheep, 3 August 2008


Jesus Christ Savior: Klaus Kinski’s 1971 Punk Rock Apocalypse


Marc Campbell, Dangerous Minds, 13 February 2011


Yer pays yer money and takes yer pick of which description you prefer. There’s a quote in this short piece which certainly says it. But who says it? Film embedded there as well.


The Mouth of Madness : Kinski Jesus Christ Saviour


Starting to get in here some of the context. If you didn’t know much about Kinski, saw him in Aguirre and that’s about it, learning about his life is part of the process of grasping this film’s context. German in 1971.


Film Comment Selects 2011: Klaus Kinski: Jesus Christ the Savior


Nick Schrager, The House Next Door, 17 February 2011


One more short description. Add them all together to get the whole thing.


Wiki: Klaus Kinski


Fill out some of the gaps from the wiki. I personally can’t be bothered to read books about his life. Quite easy to construct your own Kinski from these basic facts, the acting and a mishmash of images from the Tin Drum and beyond. The bit about his life during and post-war is of some interest to me, as it connects to so many aspects of German history and culture.

How can you not throw him into a great big imagined pot with all the keynote novels and films about Germany between the wars, during the last war and the process of Germans coming to terms or revolting against their Nazi history.

His acting in Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcaraldo, I found hard to watch even when I hadn’t got a clue who he was. His daughter Pola’s assertion in her autobiography, Kindermund,{1}that she couldn’t watch his films because that was how he behaved at home, is a sort of confirmation of that feeling.

I watched Peter Geyer’s film and then read around it. More and more I felt tempted to forego reality and imagine this was not Kinski reciting his Jesus script but him playing a character trying to do so. So him storming off and the barracking from the young audience – who hated him because they looked upon him as a rich hypocrite – seems at as if part of a script of a mocumentary.