Fitzcarraldo
Watched Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982) today. It has Klaus Kinski playing in the lead role.
Fitzcarraldo has lots of similarities with Aguirre - The Wrath of God (1972), an earlier film from Herzog and Kinski. Kinski plays the role of Fitzcarraldo, a queer personality, who is obsessed with opera, and wants to build an opera house in the dense jungles of Amazon. He doesn’t get the necessary funding for this, so he takes up a contract to get rubber from the forests of Amazon, which would bring some money to him. He buys a small steamship, and along with his crew, he starts his voyage over the Amazon and its tributaries. He has to face not only the challenges posed by nature, but also the dangerous arrows from the Indians residing in the jungle.
It seems it took more than three years to make this film, and the crew of the film had to suffer more hardships than the crew of the ship that we see in the movie. Amazon has two tributary rivers flowing in parallel, and at some place they are so close and are separated by just a small hill. There is a scene in the film where the ship is dragged from one river to the other, over the hill. It seems this was done without using any special effects! All this "behind the scene" history makes Fitzcarraldo a great achievement. At the same time, it is also an engrossing and memorable film, even though I would place it behind Aguirre - The Wrath of God.
Fitzcarraldo has lots of similarities with Aguirre - The Wrath of God (1972), an earlier film from Herzog and Kinski. Kinski plays the role of Fitzcarraldo, a queer personality, who is obsessed with opera, and wants to build an opera house in the dense jungles of Amazon. He doesn’t get the necessary funding for this, so he takes up a contract to get rubber from the forests of Amazon, which would bring some money to him. He buys a small steamship, and along with his crew, he starts his voyage over the Amazon and its tributaries. He has to face not only the challenges posed by nature, but also the dangerous arrows from the Indians residing in the jungle.
It seems it took more than three years to make this film, and the crew of the film had to suffer more hardships than the crew of the ship that we see in the movie. Amazon has two tributary rivers flowing in parallel, and at some place they are so close and are separated by just a small hill. There is a scene in the film where the ship is dragged from one river to the other, over the hill. It seems this was done without using any special effects! All this "behind the scene" history makes Fitzcarraldo a great achievement. At the same time, it is also an engrossing and memorable film, even though I would place it behind Aguirre - The Wrath of God.
posted by Ratheesh at 7:25 AM
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