First, this was not an easy film to make, involving production crews in Bahia (Brazil, where the language is Portuguese), Colombia (where the language is Spanish), and Ghana (where English is the official language, but there are several African languages), and the director and several actors speaking German...
The production unit managers in Colombia were a German lady and a Brazilean man, and probably it was not difficult for the Brazileans and local supporting cast to understand each other, as Portuguese Brazilean (spoken with softened tones) and Spanish is not very different.
English was used throu-out the production, and it was the film's main language. Except for the introduction, a poem sung by a poor blindman, and a couple of dialogues between the nobles and the bourgeois of Brazil and Pedro Vicente, that are in Brazilean Portuguese, the rest of the film is originally in English, or dubbed in English for some Ghanan actors.
When the hunch-backed bar owner, a small man with a long name (Euclides Alves da Silva Pernambucano Wanderley) and Francisco Manoel da Silva, later known as Cobra Verde (green snake) are talking, they do so in Portuguese; both are dubbed because Euclides is played by Guillermo Coronel (Spanish speaker) and Manoel da Silva is played by Klaus Kinski, a German.
In another scene, captain Pedro Vicente is played by Antonio Steffanelli (Italian actor, who would speak English) needed Portuguese dubbing for the scene.
All the lovely Amazons and the troupe of singers by the end express themselves in English or other dubbed. I don't recall hearing African dialects in the film, but it's a long time since I watched this video.
The title Cobra Verde was used in Brazil and Portugal (the Portuguese VHS is in English, with Portuguese subtitles) and runs at 106 minutes, very close to the origial 111 minutes, which may mean a couple of editing cuts to promote it for 12-year-olds, as Werner Herzog is quite graphic at times...
reply
share