Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes) opened in 1972 — Herzog's third feature, made on a budget of approximately $370,000 over five weeks of shooting in the Peruvian rainforest with no permits. The film established Herzog as the most uncompromising director of New German Cinema (alongside Fassbinder, Wenders and Schlöndorff) and his collaboration with Klaus Kinski as one of the most volatile in the medium's history. The Sight & Sound poll has placed Aguirre permanently in its upper tiers.

1561, the Andean approach to the Amazon basin. A small Spanish expedition, dispatched by Gonzalo Pizarro to find the rumoured kingdom of El Dorado, splinters into a smaller raft party led by the second-in-command Don Lope de Aguirre (Kinski). As the journey descends into hunger, fever and mutiny, Aguirre — increasingly unhinged — declares himself the Wrath of God and announces his intention to found a new dynasty in the rainforest. The closing image, of Kinski alone on a raft surrounded by hundreds of monkeys, is among the most-quoted shots in the medium.

Thomas Mauch's photography — the opening descent of the Spanish convoy down the Andean cordillera through fog, in single-take Steadicam decades before Steadicam — produced one of the most genuinely strange opening sequences in cinema. Popol Vuh's electronic score is foundational to the film's atmosphere. The Herzog-Kinski production stories (knives drawn on set, Kinski threatening to leave camp at gunpoint) are documented in Herzog's My Best Fiend; the on-screen performance is one of the great deranged star turns of the medium.