The story follows Francisco Manoel da Silva, a Brazilian rancher-turned-outlaw known as "Cobra Verde." After a life of wandering and crime, he is hired by a sugar baron to supervise plantation slaves.
Cobra Verde (1987) is a haunting, existential drama that marks the final and most volatile collaboration between visionary director Werner Herzog and his "best fiend," the mercurial actor Klaus Kinski . Based on Bruce Chatwin’s 1980 novel The Viceroy of Ouidah , the film is a fictionalized account of the real-life Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa . Plot and Narrative Cobra Verde
When da Silva impregnates all three of the baron’s daughters, the enraged landowner sends him on a suicide mission to West Africa to reopen the prohibited slave trade in the Kingdom of Dahomey. The story follows Francisco Manoel da Silva, a
The production of Cobra Verde is almost as famous as the film itself due to the explosive relationship between Herzog and Kinski. Plot and Narrative When da Silva impregnates all
Cobra Verde explores Herzog’s recurring themes: the madness of the individual, the cruelty of nature, and the ultimate futility of human ambition.
The film takes a cynical, "one-dimensional" look at colonialism, suggesting that all participants in the slave trade were complicit and equally "mad".