Fitzcarraldo

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.

One of the strangest films I have seen in some time tells the story of a South American rubber baron named Brian Fitzgerald, better known as Fitzcarraldo (Klaus Kinski), a man who dreams of building an opera house in the jungles of the Amazon.

With his white coat, white hat, and his bleached blonde hair, Fitz is quite an eccentric. In a social context, he's an outsider. But he has a bold vision. His romantic sidekick is a woman named Molly (Claudia Cardinale). As a compliment to Fitz, she speaks the film's theme: "It's only the dreamers who move mountains".

After some preparation early in the film, Fitz and crew set sail up the Amazon on a huge boat, to stake out a claim for their business that will bring in the money to advance Fitzcarraldo's dream. The boat is equipped with all the necessities, which include, naturally, a gramophone to play the operatic music of Enrico Caruso. And the best sequences of the film are those set in the remote jungle, as the boat moves through a large tributary of the Amazon, into headhunter territory. With the gramophone blaring out opera amid the sound of Indian war drums, it's the unusual contrast between the primitive and the cultural that makes this film interesting.

Filmed entirely in South America, the story is set in the early years of the twentieth century, long before the advent of television or automobiles.

Color cinematography is quite good. This is a very physical story. Most scenes take place outdoors. And the remoteness of the setting conveys a sense of doom, a sense of unknown terror and foreboding.

While the visuals are stunning, some aspects of the story I'm just not sure about. I never did figure out the significance of the ice. Is that a reward for Indian cooperation? If so, how can ice be preserved in a land without electricity? And without electricity, isn't the whole idea of an opera house in the wilderness a tad ludicrous? Maybe these questions are all answered and I just missed them. Even so, these issues could have been better addressed in the script.

Not as deeply thematic as "Aguirre: The Wrath Of God" (1972), Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" nevertheless is an unusual film, one that is worth watching for its stunning visuals and thematic contrasts, its physicality, and the eccentric character of Fitzcarraldo, the dreamer who can move mountains.

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.

His films are perfect examples of the European tradition of the 'auteur' film, in which the director is seen as the originating and creative force behind the work… But there is also a sense that Herzog's visionary monomaniacs function as the director's alter ego, embodying the heroic status of the auteur, always struggling against recalcitrant reality to fulfill his dream…

This seems especially true of "Fitzcarraldo," which, sets a hundred years ago, begins with an Irish colonist who had a passion for opera rowing 1,200 miles down a South American river, accompanied by the madam of a brothel, in order to hear the great Caruso perform…

Inspired by this experience, Fitzcarraldo embarks on a grandiose plan to open up the Amazonian jungle to river transport, providing access to new rubber plantations and thereby making enough money to build an opera house…

Herzog's favorite actor, Klaus Kinski, is as appropriately manic as Fitzcarraldo, eyes glittering madly as he pursues his vision… In the central sequence he organizes a tribe of Indians to help him pull a steamboat across a mountain in order to by-pass dangerous rapids…

"Fitcarraldo" seems by turns admiring of its hero's megalomania and mocking of his hubris, with no illusions about the cynical exploitation of the region's riches by the rubber barons whom Fitzcarraldo tries to defeat by cleverness… Ultimately though, it is the sheer spectacle which we remember

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.