The dead kings have come to depose you!
Captain Fraternidade: To slavery. The greatest misunderstanding in the history of mankind!
da Silva: It was no misunderstanding. It was a crime.
Cobra Verde is the last collaboration between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski released in 1987, based on the novel "The Viceroy of Ouidah" by Bruce Chatwin. The film follows a bandit turned slave trader named Francisco Manuel da Silva (Kinski) who is tasked with the mission of re-opening the slave trade with Western Africa.
Cobra Verde contains examples of:
- African Chant: Given it's a Herzog film, this is featured a lot.
- Amazon Brigade: The real life Dahomey Amazons who are raised to depose king Bossa.
- An Aesop: Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil
- Badass Boast: The dead kings have come to depose you!
- Bittersweet Ending: da Silva loses all he gained because slavery is abolished, which the film portrays as a good thing.
- The Caligula: King Bossa is completely delusional and has ordered his men to kill anyone with the name Bossa because he can't stand sharing his name with any one else.
- Darkest Africa: Werner Herzog even admitted that he felt a bit uncomfortable with how much of the dark parts of African history and culture he felt compelled to include interludes with traditional Ghanian music to balance the rest.
- Epic Movie: After Fitzcarraldo, this is Herzog's largest film with thousands of extras and locations in Ghana, Brazil and Colombia.
- Heel Realization: da Silva's final line in the film is the denouement of his own actions.
- Kavorka Man: da Silva to Dom Coutinho's daughters. Through in the end he rapes them, so it's not played straight.
- Mighty Whitey: Invoked in the film, but ultimately averted. King Bossa's nephew Prince Kankpe wants to use da Silva as a figurehead for an uprising because his reputation will inspire the troops and Kankpe believes da Silva has connections that will be useful to him. When the later turns out to be false da Silva loses all support from Kankpe and da Silva is left with nothing.
- Villain Protagonist: da Silva aka Cobra Verde.
- "The slaves will sell their masters and grow wings..."
