Fitzcarraldo (1982)

There is no other film quite like the frenzied dream that is Fitzcarraldo.

The antithesis of generic milkshake movies which crowd todays multiplexes, Fitzcarraldo is a challenging and fascinating film, similar in spirit to some of Coppola's best or an attempt at the best of Orson Welles. Like both of those visionaries, Herzog dreams large, and although there are sometimes gaps in logic or narrative flow, the mad scope of the vision is inimitable.

In telling the tale of a man obsessed with bringing European culture to the dark mud of South America, director Herzog challenges himself to do the impossible--and, perhaps at the cost of human lives and daily sanity, lets himself and his lead, Klaus Kinski, succeed. The mysterious and spectacular images captured by photographer Thomas Mauch will linger in your brain, and the weird obsession that drives wild-eyed Kinski will, if you're willing to flow with him in that creaky steamer down the Amazon, take you on a trip you will long recall

Fmovies: Like Fitzcarraldo, Herzog has a well-known passion for opera--he's been known to conduct on occasion and refers to music as the territory of "ecstatic truth." Film, too, has that potential, if it's released from the literal and the director concentrates on the importance of "great images." It's no surprise, then, that Herzog made Fitzcarraldo without a well-defined narrative goal. He just wanted to see if he could do it.

Filmmaking is a personal and social process for him, not a finished product. It's an extreme version of method acting. Like Fitzcarraldo's lifting of the boat, grand gestures go far for Herzog, if only to show the world that you're great and visionary enough to try. Most of his characters are done in by their obsessive drive (Fitzcarraldo's boat crashing into the rapids, Aguirre madly pacing about on his raft), but leave behind something beautiful. Like a boat being dragged up a mountain in Peru with ropes and pulleys or a gun depot going up like the 4th of July.

You can't give Herzog too much credit--he's been more careful not to be done in by his hubris than any of his characters were. In fact, he's capitalized on it, much the same way Cappola did after Apocalypse Now or Hopper did after Easy Rider. No doubt, the tales of his misadventures contribute as much to his films' popularity as the stories and images themselves, and he's been quick to market his persona with books, talks, and films about himself, the mad director.

But still, Herzog is a great romantic that was born of a time and place (Munich, 1942) with few romantics, which is its own great feat. See Fitzcarraldo for a little bit of that.

This is a quest plot line; the golden chalice is to be found in the interior of the Amazon, a performance by Caruso and his opera company in the early 1900's. Klaus Kinski, of the disheveled blond hair, plays the obsessive opera lover. The town's folks believe him to me loco and well they should since his Trans-Andes railroad bankrupted the dreamer. His ice making operation makes no sense. His dream of Peruvian opera is a laughingstock, but he has an ace up his sleeve, his devoted lover, Claudia Cardinale, the local madam of distinction forks over the front money so Klaus can buy a boat to get to the rubber trees in a remote steamy jungle inhabited by headhunters. Oh, there's another problem. Rapids block access to the rubber trees, so Klaus must take another river parallel to the rapids, and then at a narrow point of land, must drag a steamship over a mountain. Unbelievable, the film crew took three years in the jungle to duplicate the feat, a engineering marvel, or a stunning duplication. My hat is off to Werner Herzog. This is what great adventure and acting is all about.

Fitzcarraldo fmovies. Full of bravura and inspiring sequences the bizarre epic "Fitzcarraldo" won Werner Herzog the best director award at Cannes Festival in 1982. This is the film that keeps reminding us the words of Oscar Wilde, "We are all in the gutter but some of us look at the stars". Even fewer try to reach the stars and Werner Herzog and his longtime collaborator and frequent adversary Klaus Kinski were certainly the men who have reached them. Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (or Fitzcaralado – the local Indians' name for Fitzgerald) was a visionary, a man with a beautiful obsession who dreamed of a building an opera house in the Peruvian rain forests and bringing the great singer Enrico Caruso there. Fitzcaralado's plan involved dragging a huge steamship over a small mountain to avoid traveling upstream through rapids. This plan was duplicated by Herzog during the production and involved the real Indians actually hauling the boat over the mountain. The image of the boat floating in the clouds and the small figure of Fitzcarraldo dressed in the white suit looking with his crazy wild eyes at the boat is one of the most beautiful and breathtaking visions at the screen ever. This film is not as perfect as Herzog's and Kinski's previous project, the stunning "Aguirre, The Wrath of God" but it is a magnificent and fascinating tale that could only be told by its matchless team of creators.

This film was a real labour of love for Werner Herzog (he said at the time of making it: "I live my life or end my life with this film"). The movie tells the story of an entrepreneaur (Klaus Kinski) who is obssessed with the idea of building a Grand Opera house in the Peruvian jungle. To get the money to do this however, he has to set off on a long and dangerous journey to open up new trade routes for a previously inaccessible part of the jungle, rich in valuable rubber trees.

The most famous image in the film is the hauling of a large steam-boat up the side of a mountain (a feat which was achieved by the film-makers without the aid of special effects). Visually, the film is spectacular and everything is beautifully photographed. Kinski is superb as the crazed adventurer.

On the minus side, however, some viewers might be put off by the slow pace of the film.

This film stands as one of Herzog's best, and most accessible works, and is a must-see for anyone.

Amazingly beautiful, well-acted jungle drama details entrepreneur Fitzcarraldo's attempts to mine rubber in order to raise money to accomplish his dream -- to bring grand opera to his tiny town in Peru. Girlfriend Cardinale buys him a boat (to help with the mining), but unfortunately can't go on the journey, which ends up with Fitz and hundreds of indians physically dragging the huge riverboat over a mountain. Kinski's performance is top of the line, very good direction, some very memorable scenes -- Fitzcarraldo on top of his boat playing Caruso records into the jungle, the huge boat cresting the wave of the mountain, and even the triumphant ending rings true. The best film by Werner Herzog that I have seen.