Continuity mistake: In the close-up shot of the gunpowder casket on fire it is located on a relatively dry spot of the raft and is in partial sunlight however when the shot changes, for Aguirre to pick it up and throw it off the raft, you can see the area is now slightly submerged and no longer sunlit at all. (00:55:46)
Continuity mistake: After the scene when Aguirre and his men raid the cannibal village they get back on the raft. Aguirre approaches Ursua, lying injured next to his wife, and stares him down. Ursua's wife then stands up to Aguirre and grabs his arm. The shot then changes to a different angle and suddenly the horse appears behind Aguirre so that he can walk into it unexpectedly as he turns around. (00:53:30)
Continuity mistake: When the soldier finds the other soldier dead, having been hanged from a tree by Indians, he panics and flees. Between shots the halberd weapon he was holding vanishes. (00:22:59)
Answer: Kinski suffered from mental illness for most of his life. He was given to bouts of unprovoked outbursts and violence. He was eventually diagnosed with psychopathy (antisocial personality disorder). On movie sets, he was notorious for being physically and verbally abusive to the crew, who generally hated him. The sword incident was just one of many. On the production of this film, director Werner Herzog carried a gun on him in the event he had to protect himself or others. It was only because Herzog was a long-time friend that he hired Kinski for acting jobs. Kinski was flat-out crazy. He was eventually unable to get any work as an actor.
raywest
Agreed. I forget what film set it was but Kinski also once fired a rifle at a bunch of crew members and blew a guy's finger off. He was unstable.
Jack Vaughan
It was also Aguirre, The Wrath Of God. Kinski was irritated by the noises from a hut where cast and crew were playing cards and, out of anger, repeatedly fired a Winchester rifle into it. One of the bullets took the tip of an unknown extra's finger off.