Kinski Uncut: 4the Autobiography of Klaus Kinski

Few celebrity memoirs are remotely as raw, pornographic and confessional as this notorious self-portrait by German actor Kinski (1926-1991), today best known for his brooding, expressionistic performances in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God. When Random House, fearing legal problems, withdrew publication in 1989 of an earlier version of this book, All I Need Is Love, Kinski's memoir became an underground classic. This new and, according to Viking, unabridged translation shows little patience for documentary minutiae. So manic, hallucinatory and self-obsessed is Kinski's account of his rise from a dire childhood in the slums of Berlin to international stardom that it yields a far clearer picture of his seething inner life and incorrigible womanizing than of his film career. In an angry, raving, sometimes barely coherent present-tense narrative, Kinski describes being drafted into the Nazi army at 16; suffering in an English POW camp; gaining prominence in the fringe theater of a war-ravaged Germany. He goes on to cover his star turns in a slew of second-tier genre pictures shot in Italy and France as he contemptuously turned down directors like Fellini and Kurosawa, who wouldn't pay his escalating salary. He then discusses his roles in the Herzog films, plagued by production problems in the depths of the Amazon jungle. Kinski's take on Herzog drips bile and exudes dementia (""he doesn't have the foggiest inkling of how to make movies. Every scene, every angle, every shot is determined by me""). Throughout the memoir, however, acting is mere background to a lifelong sexual odyssey, including dozens of encounters explicitly rendered here--with young actresses, hookers, chambermaids and, in two memorable scenes, Alberto Moravia's wife and Idi Amin's daughter. In this raging memoir, the devil isn't just in the details: he's everywhere. (Aug.)