Fitzcarraldo (1982 movie)

[Smartypants]

I strongly recommend this film -

Fitzcarraldo (1982) - IMDb

Fitzcarraldo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The entire film is available on Youtube but I am not going to post links here. Not that this film was originally in English and later dubbed into German.

Here is the synopsis according to IMDB -

The story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an extremely determined man who intends to build an opera house in the middle of a jungle.

 

[Smartypants]

First and foremost - Herzog might well be nuts (There is a fine line between genius and insanity, and Herzog is treading on that fine line while veering from right to left at any given moment)

Here is a simple breakdown of the story -

1) Mad dude crazy over opera wants to build an opera house in the middle of some backwater shanty town somewhere in the Amazon (to be specific, in Peru).

2) Mad dude needs money to do this but all the rich rubber barons ignore him.

3) Mad dude decides that he needs to get rich by becoming a rubber baron himself, and the way to do this is to sail through the Amazon river on a steamship and drag said steamship over a patch of forest (a few hundred meters in length) separating two tributaries of the Amazon.

4) Mad dude will then sail down the second tributary, collect rubber from the rubber trees in the area, and transport rubber back to backwater shanty town for profit.

Here is what Herzog did -

1) He purchased and refurbished three actual steamships (varying from 100 to 300 tons in weight) - three so he could supposedly save time by shooting scenes at different locations simultaneously.

2) He went into the middle of the Amazonian rainforest and hired a few hundred native Indians (REAL ONES).

3) He scouted out these two Amazon tributaries separated by a patch of rainforest a few hundred meters in length.

4) With the help of the Indians (and a bulldozer), he cleared said patch of rainforest and dragged a steamship from Tributary A to Tributary B. With nothing but a primitive pulley system. At a FORTY DEGREE INCLINE.

5) The steamship came down the other side into Tributary B and sailed down the river into the rapids. Herzog was on board with his cast and crew while the ship was thrown about at the absolute mercy of the raging rapids. One cameraman busted his hand, another had a concussion, another broke three ribs. THEY KEPT FILMING.

6) The entire film, from pre-production to completion, took four years. Imagine being stranded in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest for that stretch of time with your cast and crew, accompanied by hundreds of native Indians, on a barren patch of land accessible only by boat and the sporadic delivery plane. The humidity. The insects. The boredom (their only entertainment was a football. Not surprisingly, it burst). The crappy food. The lack of proper sanitation. Most of us couldn't even last three days in Mandai jungle.

Peter Jackson and James Cameron, eat your hearts out. What they would have done in front of a green screen on a production set, Herzog did FOR REAL.


The production of this film was fraught with disaster -

1) Jason Robards (give yourself a pat on the back if you know who he is) and Mick Jagger were the original two leads -

Unfortunately Robards came down with severe dysentery after FORTY PERCENT of the film was completed. Jagger could not wait the seven to nine months required for Robards to convalesce and quit the project as well. Herzog had to scrape everything he had shot so far and press the reboot button with a new lead, Klaus Kinski (give yourself another pat on the back if you know who he is).

Frankly, Robards/Jagger kinda sucked. In my opinion, their departure was kinda fortuitous since it brought Kinski into the picture.

2) Klaus Kinski is a one-man walking disaster (In Herzog's words, Brando is kindergarten compared to Kinski). Here is Kinski having an argument with Walter Saxer, the producer -

Btw, this was considered a minor tantrum (he didn't hit anyone or walk off the set). One of the greatest actors of his generation, but probably the most volatile as well. A physical entity made up of equal parts insanity and melancholy (one cannot stare at his face without feeling just a little bit sad), he was a constant menace and troublemaker to everyone he came into contact with (yet strangely enough, was in popular demand).

3) There was a border war going on nearby between Ecuador and Peru. One day, soldiers came over and held everyone at gunpoint. They forced everyone off the set before burning everything. Herzog had to start from scratch. AGAIN.

4) The Brazilian engineer who designed the initial pulley system to drag the steamship over the patch of rainforest quit, saying Herzog was crazy and 70% of the natives would die. Herzog went ahead anyway. The pulley gave way (fortunately, no one was hurt). It didn't help that the bulldozer kept breaking down and the spare parts had to be flown in from America.

After hiring a brand new engineering team, he continued. But that was after many months of begging for new investors (the money ran out).

5) The filming, originally timed to coincide with the rainy season, had to be pushed back many months due to the numerous delays. By the time filming began, the Amazon was experiencing its driest patch of weather in decades. Unable to navigate the knee-deep water, the steamships were stuck in place for seven months. Everyone went home and came back seven months later.

All of the above I gleam from watching Burden of Dreams, a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo (which strangely enough, is more engaging than the movie itself).

Finally, an excerpt from Burden of Dreams showing Herzog finally losing it -

To summarize, the production of this film is insane. No other modern production could ever do this ever again. Everything built to scale and shot on location. Native Indians. War zone. Departure of both leads midway into the film. Four year production. Suffice to say Herzog is Fitzcarraldo himself, a modern Sisyphean myth built on nothing but an unwavering belief that one day, the rock will be pushed over the mountain.