Paganini

An obsessive, neurotic, schizoid masterpiece that is so far ahead of its time that its time is still ahead. It is a Rorschach test that will reveal the level of your soul. Yes, a dark evil film but a cinematically productive one, reading from Kinski's intuition about how his forms can read for us. The film, for decades, like a mad person, has been confined to an insane asylum, and considered a danger to society. It was like an unspoken secret not to see it.

I always liked it but I have been psyched out over the years from the orthodoxy insisting on its lack of merits. It has been enraging people for decades and I assumed in the restoration it would find a new life, only to find it is enraging the modern critics as well. A bad time to re-discover Kinski's Paganini (the only director other than Fellini who should have his name in the title of the movie). In our sterile climate of unprecedented conformity and rigid views of art, this reception is a mark for the film, not against it.

For all of Herzog's bad mouthing of Kinski, this film has had a grander restoration and release than his own output. Remember it was only together they made their enduring masterpieces; so badmouthing Kinski's B-movies maybe we can do the same for Herzog's nature channel documentaries or Hollywood Nicolas Cage Michael Shannon embarrassments.

I am being defensive of this movie because it warrants it, and I sense he didn't want it to impede on their works together, as if that was in danger of happening.

The cinematography brings a kind of gorgeous ancient European feeling. The editing is crass, obscene, appalling of course, it is Paganini. When have we ever had an edit like this? It is utterly mad, but it works as the most frightening tone poem ever on film, akin to even the weirdest underground Japanese cinema.

You almost don't want people to get it, and to continue to live in a state of blissful oblivion. And yet through its runtime it is a nonstop poem of madness, sex, only missing drugs; (as Dali said, and it might as well have been Kinski, "I do not take drugs, I am drugs".)

It is not for pretentious people. I can illustrate that I have watched Ken Russell's composer biopics recently, and while they are far from vanilla, in fact they are often quite daring, Paganini exposes them all as practically Disney fare.

And yet, we shouldn't take this all so literally either. I have always had a question of how mad Klaus Kinski actually was. I can tell you that you cannot make hundreds of films without having a firm grasp of reality, in fact, you must to survive in that business. He showed up on time, he made the films, he went home. The behind the scenes documentary of Fitzcarraldo shows him throwing a temper tantrum, yes, but it also shows him doing scene after scene with the utmost professionalism. The behind the scenes of Cobra Verde shows no tantrum at all.

So the depiction of this man is that he was a wild animal, a mad man, that does not gel for film business professionalism or the work the two created.

Point is, it is key to see this all as an artistic point of view. Kinski was not a De Sade figure, but it was how he played it. The film expresses both his inner dragon, but more, how he wanted to be seen.

What stands out here is that it's told without a hint of irony, like the followers of Herzog's bourgeoisie 'weird cinema' sensationalism. This is perhaps why it provoked them so greatly, he is showing the real thing.

Any bit of humor we can laugh at, such as the audience of women going crazy for him, is actually not as one would think, there for cinematic spectacle, but to express surreal excess, the contagious euphoria of being on stage. The film's goal is to capture is in this same trance.

The restoration finally brings the film to life for the first time ever. I am not sure if Vinegar Syndrome perceived its artistic virtues or did it to highlight it as a disastrous spectacle, but whatever is the reason, it's there to infuriate people for the rest of time. Kinski went farther than almost anyone, like Paganini he was not playing to the audiences, but to the fates.

This film has a less-than-stellar reputation. Paganini is portrayed by Klaus Kinski in his final film; after failing to persuade his best 'fiend' Werner Herzog to direct, Kinsi did the job himself, electing to use only natural lighting. The resulting scenes are often obscured because of this. Kinski energetically mimes to the frenzied violin playing of Paganini, with his right hand. In close-ups of the genuine player that are spliced in, the instrument is being played with the left hand. These things, the meandering story, and the tasteless sex scenes between the titular character and a series of underage girls, have been used to berate the film. They don't bother me that much, particularly the latter, because that was an undeniable element of the character.

What sets my teeth on edge is the consistent use of screeching, choppy violin 'music' throughout the 81-minute runtime. Of course that was the sound Paganini was known for. Of course it represents his genius and torment (traits Kinski seized upon when he made the film, probably because of the similarities between them both). But it's present all the time, as a backdrop to all the varied emotional moments. What makes Paganini's final, and very powerful, scenes so effective is the comparative silence in which they are represented.

By this time in his life, as the Blu-ray extras attest at length, Kinski felt he was spent, that he 'did not exist', and this exacerbated his extreme behaviour (one commentator tells how every morning, after checking his make-up, the star would smash the mirror, explaining the reflection only has the right to see his image once). I'm not sure whether it was because no one wanted to work with him at this stage, or he wouldn't listen to advice anyway, but whatever; this film cries out for additional eyes during production, a more restrained voice behind the camera.

'Paganini', or 'Kinski Paganini', has many fine moments. Much of the superb location is well captured, the period and settings are well realised, many of the performances are very good (Kinski's son Nikolai in particular) and there's no denying that Klaus the actor was a force of nature and delivers a bombastic final performance. It could really have benefitted from a less grating soundtrack and a more subtle director. My score is 6 out of 10.

In this movie, Kinski gives his last great performance as the 19th century italian violin virtuoso Nicolo Paganini. People even say that Kinski is his reincarnation. At least, what we can say is that Kinski adopted the violin player's lifestyle. Paganini, in his time, was considered the first "rock star" even though rock wasn't even invented yet because he lived a life saturated with late parties, orgies and sexcapades of all kinds. No moral law, Carpe Diem all the way! Kinski was working on this project since the early 1970s. It was his little baby. And even though its narration is without any narration, with no genuinelike biographical anecdotes, its incoherent editing illustrates with wit, passion and violence what the murky worlds of Paganini and Kinski were all about. But beware, sensible people should pass this one.

Herzog fans know the story, that the great actor and notorious madman Klaus Kinski tried to get him to direct a screenplay he'd written, some kind of biography of Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini. When Herzog told him his script was awful and had zero cinematic potential, he became enraged and decided to make the film himself. A wildly incompetent, deranged vanity project, Paganini was the last film Kinski made before his death, and his sole credit as director and screenwriter, and it's been little-seen since then. Now, in the year of our lord 2024, the deviants at Vinegar Syndrome have decided to give this film the deluxe blu-ray treatment that it certainly doesn't deserve, and allow us to see and judge this fascinating historical document for ourselves. Well then...

So, uh, 8 minutes into the movie, a narrator tells us "Every time he played, Paganini's phallus would become erect", while women attending his violin recital are shown to be apparently orgasming in their seats. This is pretty much the type of material I expected from Kinski. There is some occasionally amusing, depraved or gonzo filmmaking here, of which these opening scenes are rather a highlight. It also gets into some fairly creepy territory - exploring Paganini's apparent love of specifically underage girls, and there's something very off as well about how Kinski portrays his relationship with his son - all of which seems about right from a guy who sexually abused his daughter in real life.

What I less expected is that he's really moreso trying to make an arthouse film here, maybe even to direct it the way he thinks that Herzog would. I will say that the period costumes and set dressing are actually pretty good. But the thing is, most of the film, nothing is happening. And this is actually my biggest complaint about the film. Most of the time we're either watching Kinski pretend to play the violin, or, just, barely doing anything, while violin music nonetheless incessantly carries on in the soundtrack. This is maddening to the point where it's sometimes comical, as in a (shall we say, "iconic"?) five-minute scene that cuts back and forth at least 20 times between Kinski and a masked woman walking toward each other in slow motion.

As a biopic of Paganini, this is an epic fail. I didn't know anything about Paganini before, and I still don't think I learned anything. But, somehow, if you look closely enough, it feels almost autobiographical. Kinski in fact genuinely believed he was the living reincarnation of Niccolò Paganini. And from that perspective, as someone who's watched "My Best Fiend", and read "All I Need is Love" (aka "Kinski Uncut"), and seen countless interviews and media with Kinski (usually losing his s***)... As someone fascinated less by Niccolò Paganini and more by Klaus Kinski... I did find this film pretty interesting! Not on its own merits of course, but as a piece of film culture. And in that sense, the VinSyn blu-ray actually is deserved, and it's kind of an amazing release, especially given the wealth of supplemental features on it (including an hour of absolutely insane behind-the-scenes footage of Kinski directing, where, with his long black hair and delusional self-confidence, he looks like Tommy Wiseau - on cocaine... I think I found my review headline!)

I watched Paganini for the first time, then ran to watch bits of Fitzcarraldo again. I just realized why: It was the armchair cineaste's equivalent of taking a shower to rinse the muck off after watching Paganini.

I needed to watch Fitzcarraldo to remind myself that, yes, Kinski was a great actor. And he was.

I never thought I'd actually find a genuine-article case of this, but in Paganini you have Kinski finally using film--and his fans--as a full-tilt surrogate for his fading fantasy that he's the rooster in the barnyard.

It really is shameless. People thought that Woody Allen used film like this way long after he shoulda. Well, guess what? Allen is a piker.

If you're curious to see a great film star at his lowest ebb in this particular regard, watch Paganini.

Now, people in these comments extol the natural lighting, Kinski's raw magnetism, the unstudied editing, the artful inattention to technique in general, genuinely moving scenes of familial love, etc., etc. Yes, all those things are arguably there. I'm not just being conciliatory for rhetorical effect. But there comes a time when you have to admit the evidence of what you're seeing before your very eyes, and the conclusion is inescapable: Kinski is jerking off at our expense. He's not just exercising an eccentric degree of artistic license. He's lost in unfiltered, unsublimated sexual self-aggrandizement.