Werner Herzog, alias Werner Stipetic, made five films with Klaus Kinski, alias Klaus-Günther Nakszynski - six, if you include Mein Liebster Feind (My Beloved Enemy), an affectionate documentary of their passionate love-hate friendship being presented at a Special Screening on a Sunday afternoon in the Salle Lumière. Nearly all have gone down in Cannes festival history as either highwater marks of artistic creativity or anticipated moments of intriguing memorabilia.

You might even say that Aguirre, Wrath Of God (1972), Nosferatu, Phantom Of The Night (1978), Woyzeck (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and Cobra Verde (1987) compose a unique, personal, thematic cycle on shattered lives in isolated places, the definitive series in the oeuvre of Werner Herzog.

Klaus Kinski (1926-1991), born of Polish parents in Sopot, found himself in a British POW camp while still a teenager. Settling in Berlin after the war, he joined theatre ensembles at the Schlosspark Theater and Hebbel Theater, where the records show he played the major classic roles.

Discarding the stage for film in the mid-1950s, he quickly established a reputation as an eccentric both on and off the screen. Veteran name directors like Douglas Sirk, Sergio Leone, and David Lean used his talents for the bizarre and curious to good effect in, respectively, A Time To Live And A Time To Die (1957), For A Few Dollars More (1965), and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

When Werner Herzog, 16 years younger than Klaus Kinski, approached the adult terrible to collaborate with him on Aguirre, Kinski was then 45 years old and riding a wave of madman popularity both in Europe and Hollywood, an actor guided as much by his instincts as by his remarkable talent to upstage anyone on the set with presence alone.

As Herzog was to note, the pair were doomed to clash from the beginning, particularly as the director was just as mad for shooting in the Amazones as the actor was for accepting the role of a deranged conquistador.

Towards the end of the shoot, Kinski erupted - and threatened to leave the set if a technician he fingered was not fired on the spot. Here's Herzog's version of the off-repeated story about the showdown: "I didn't have a gun - he just made that up later to cast a better light upon himself … I told him I have a rifle, and he would only make it as far as the next bend in the river before he had eight bullets in his head - the ninth would be for me."

Thanks to its reception at Cannes and its subsequent release on art house circuits in Europe and America, Aguirre went on to become an acclaimed classic in the New German Cinema Movement. And thanks to the support of Tom Luddy and Bill Pence at the Telluride film festival, Werner Herzog became an independent producer-director who could pretty much chart his own production future.

Word went out that if you wished to contact Werner for projects or interviews, then the two addresses were Cannes in May (either at the Blue Bar or the Majestic Bar) or Telluride in the Colorado Rockies in September (where he showed up 10 years running). Bill Pence's appearance in My Beloved Enemy adds a nostalgic note to this personal documentary.

Six years after Aguirre, Herzog and Kinski collaborated again on back-to-back productions: the remake of FW Murnau's Nosferatu and a screen adaptation of Georg Büchner's expressionistic play Woyzeck.

In Nosferatu Isabelle Adjani dared a rat scene in much the same manner as Kinski toyed with monkeys on a raft in Aguirre - both sequences contain trademark Herzog images that haunt by sending a couple shivers down your back. In Woyzeck, shot in a picturesque Czech village, Kinski was given one of the best opportunities of his screen career to demonstrate the full range of his acting skills.

Fitzcarraldo brought the pair back to the Amazon jungle, this time in the company of Claudia Cardinale. As chronicled in the documentary Burden Of Dreams, this mad tale about an adventurer determined to drag a ship over a mountain took two years of interrupted work to complete - a task that could only be resolved in the end by reconstructing a waterfall-chute on the backlot of the Bavaria Studio in Munich.

Cobra Verde, a haunting vision of the slave trade inspired by the writings of Bruce Chatwin, found Herzog and Kinski together for the last time on the west coast of Africa. And now, Mein Liebster Feind finally sets the seal on a truly unique partnership. Ron Holloway

Dir: Werner Herzog Contributors: Klaus Kinski, Werner Herzog, Eva Mattes, Claudia Cardinale, Beat Presser, Guillermo Rios, Andrés Vicente, Justo Gonzales, Benino Moreno Plácido, Baron von der Recke Bill Pence Prod: Lucki Stipetic Prod Co: Werner Herzog Film, Zephir Film, Cafe Productions Running time: 1hr 38 mins Int'l Sales: Werner Herzog Film (Munich)