Fitzcarraldo
"Fitzcarraldo opens on the note of madness, which it will sustain. Out of the dark void of the Amazon comes a boat, its motor dead, the shock-haired [Klaus] Kinski furiously rowing at the prow, while his mistress (Claudia Cardinale) watches anxiously behind him. They are late for the opera. He has made some money with an ice-making machine, she is a madam whose bordello services wealthy rubber traders, and as they talk their way into an opera house, Fitzcarraldo knows his mission in life: He will become rich, build an opera house in the jungle, and hire Caruso to sing in it." "Fortunes in this district are built on rubber. He obtains the rights to 400 square miles that are thought to be useless because a deadly rapids prevents a boat from reaching them. But if he could bring a boat from another river, his dream could come true. The real Fitzgerald only moved a 32-ton boat between rivers, and he disassembled it first. Hearing the story, Herzog was struck by the image of a boat moving up a hillside, and the rest of the screenplay followed." "Herzog admitted that he could have filmed his entire production a day or two outside Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Instead, he filmed in the rain forest, 500 miles from the nearest sizable city. That allows shots like the one where Fitzcarraldo and his boat captain stand in a platform at the top of the tallest tree, surveying the vastness around them." "The story of the making of 'Fitzcarraldo' is told in 'Burden of Dreams' (1982), a documentary by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling, who spent time in the jungle with Herzog, his mutinous crew and his eccentric star. After you see the Herzog film and "Burden," it's clear that everyone associated with the film was marked, or scarred, by the experience; there is an impassioned speech in "Burden" where Herzog denounces the jungle as "vile and base," and says, "It's a land which God, if he exists, has created in anger." ---- Roger Ebert DVD
Director: Werner Herzog Country: West Germany
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