PAGANINI. Klaus Kinski’s Farewell to Cinema

A great actor does not have to be a great director, as Paganini proves all too well.

Two priests are on their way to the estate of Niccolò Paganini, the dying Italian composer and violin virtuoso. They debate whether to administer the last rites to a musician known for his promiscuity and cheating, and suspected of having made a pact with the devil himself. The priests decide to offer Paganini the sacrament and absolution, provided he shows remorse and performs penance—but Achille, the artist’s teenage son, throws them out. Meanwhile, Paganini, in agony on his deathbed, conducts a final reckoning and reflection on his life: he remembers his relationship with the singer Antonia Bianchi, his many sexual conquests, lost loves, struggles with the clergy and authorities, and public performances that brought him both fame and scandal. In his final moments, the only solace is the presence of Achille.

To say that Klaus Kinski identified with Paganini would be an understatement. The German actor was apparently convinced he was the reincarnation of the musician who lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. They did, in fact, share much: artistic genius, a volatile temperament, an obsessive fear of poverty stemming from childhood, a wild lifestyle, adoration from crowds coupled with accusations of various misdeeds, and a passion for women (especially, or perhaps above all, very young ones). Kinski became fixated on Paganini in the 1970s and even wrote a screenplay titled The Devil’s Violinist for a planned television miniseries. However, no one was interested in the production—not even his frequent collaborator Werner Herzog, who considered the script unfilmable. Kinski was thus forced to shelve his dream project.

Things changed in the following decade. As Kinski recalled in his autobiography All I Need is Love, he was on the verge of destroying the script when he received a telegram from Italian producer Alfredo Bini, who expressed interest in reviving the abandoned project: “Bini has known the text for years and says he can produce a film about Paganini. When he arrives in Paris, I’ll sign a contract with him for the screenplay, direction, and lead role.” [1] The production responsibilities were later taken over by Carlo Alberto Alfieri and Augusto Caminito, who imposed one condition: they would fund Paganini if Kinski agreed to appear in two of Caminito’s films—Nosferatu in Venice (1988) and The Rogues (1988). Kinski accepted, reserving for himself the roles of director, screenwriter, lead actor, and editor, and casting his then-partner Debora Caprioglio and his son Nikolai.

Paganini is, therefore, an auteur project in the fullest sense. It is also a textbook example of a so-called passion-and-vanity project—born from genuine obsession and aimed at satisfying the creator’s megalomaniacal ambitions. If anyone still doubted whether Kinski was an egotistical narcissist convinced of his own greatness, a viewing of Paganini should put those doubts to rest. Kinski never hides the fact that he is Paganini—the composer’s sexual conquests are his own trophies; the tenderness Paganini shows Achille mirrors Kinski’s relationship with his own son; the audience’s reactions to Paganini’s performances resemble the cult following Kinski gained through roles in films by Herzog, Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Antonio Margheriti, and Jesús Franco; and his disdain for authority is yet another parallel.

Yet all this leads nowhere, aside from an unbearable display of self-indulgence by Klaus Kinski—a great actor who turned out to be a terrible screenwriter, a helpless director, and an even worse editor. Summarizing Paganini is no easy task, as the film is virtually plotless, a chaotic collage of scenes that would make no more sense in any other order. So, here goes: Paganini plays the violin, women masturbate to his music, Paganini plays, horses copulate, Paganini plays to the ecstasy of the audience, high society sees him as either the devil or his disciple, Paganini plays again, more women orgasm, Paganini—surprise!—plays again, someone dances, Paganini composes, helps the poor, has sex with dozens of women anywhere he can, strolls, dotes on his son, falls ill, and dies. The end.

There are two versions of the film—the producer’s cut and the director’s cut—but neither is defensible. Herzog was right when he said that Kinski’s script was impossible to bring to the screen—and the German actor certainly failed to do so in any satisfactory way. Paganini resembles the efforts of the sorcerer’s apprentice, who knows neither the magic words nor how to control the forces he has unleashed. It is also a sad case of the last artistic spasms of a man losing touch with reality and descending into madness. In the 1999 documentary My Best Fiend, Herzog stated that at this point in his career, Kinski was already completely burned out. It’s no wonder that Paganini was not only Kinski’s first and last film as a director, but also his final performance before his death in 1991. One can imagine a better farewell to cinema.