| Fitzcarraldo | 
 enlarge | Director: Werner Herzog
Actors: Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, Jose Lewgoy, Miguel Angel Fuentes, Paul Hittscher
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Category: DVD
List Price: $34.97
Buy New: $14.93
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Avg. Customer Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 10849
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Color, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: German (Original Language), English (Subtitled), English (Dubbed)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 158
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 2
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5 x 0.6
MPN: 013131093896
UPC: 013131093896
EAN: 0013131093896
ASIN: B00001ODHV
Theatrical Release Date: October 10, 1982
Release Date: November 16, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An Irishman, Fitzgerald (Fitzcarraldo to the Indians), struggles to bring his dream, an opera house in the Amazon jungle, to reality.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 2-NOV-1999
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com
Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), known as Fitzcarraldo to the native Peruvians, is an avid opera lover and rubber baron who dreams of building an opera house in the Peruvian jungle. To accomplish this, he plans to reach an isolated patch of rubber trees and make his fortune. But these trees are not directly accessible by river because of dangerous rapids, so Fitzcarraldo runs his ship as close as possible via an alternate river and then enlists the aid of the native Peruvians to drag his ship over a mountain to the desired area. However, the natives seem to have their own agenda in so mysteriously acceding to Fitzcarraldo's wishes. The results manage to both mock and affirm the dreams of determined figures like Fitzcarraldo, making absurdity out of the stuff of human endeavor without negating the beauty of that effort. There is hardly a more awe-inspiring or arresting image than that of Fitzcarraldo's ship pulling itself up the mountain with cables and pulleys, or of the ship resting in mid-ascent as seen through the thick morning fog of the jungle. The tortured production history of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (ably recorded in Les Blank's documentary Burden of Dreams) tends to take the spotlight away from this deeply mesmerizing film. And that's unfortunate, because the film itself is even more fascinating than the trials and tribulations, amazing though they might be, that led to its being made. Part of the problem is the film's deliberate, some might say ponderous, pace, which invites the viewer to experience the slow immersion into the jungle that Fitzcarraldo and company experience. Herzog did something similar in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, sometimes aiming his camera at the river rapids for extended periods of time, with hypnotic results. This could never happen in a Hollywood film, and it should be treasured. --Jim Gay
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| Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...
 Ship of State October 3, 2008
I will never forget seeing "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" some 20 years ago. It is to this day one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen. Somehow "Fitzcarraldo" got past me, and I have been trying to see it ever since. It did not do for me what "Aguirre" once did, but this may have as much or more to do with my own shrunken state as it does with the film's limitations. If the film is "just" an historical anecdote, a story, then it cannot be faulted. The film is told well. It is filmed beautifully. It is certainly one of the weirdest things ever filmed; only Coppola's mad "Apocalypse Now" can match its audacity. What made "Aguirre" so extraordinary was its metaphorical power; its evocation not only of colonial South America and the lunacy of an adventurer's dream, but its powerfully suggestive imagery which brought to mind the failed ambitions of the Third Reich. It was a kind of mythical tragedy. "Fitzcarraldo" does not have the same power to evoke thoughts of a modern Germany off course, headed for disaster. For one thing, the film ends somewhat happily. The dream is realized if not fully, and there is no suggestion that great dreams have been brought to a lunatic end. Instead, the madness of the adventurer is vindicated. He gets his ship over the mountain; he even gets to hear his opera played in the jungle. What is the message? That one should never give up? Herzog is one of the most provocative and exciting film makers of the post-war era. This film offers a lot. Perhaps I am wrong to want the meaning of the film made clear.
Herzog scores September 11, 2008
I first watched Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo back in the late 1980s, on PBS, and found it to be a great film. All these years later I still find it to be a great film, if not quite in a league with Herzog and Klaus Kinski's other most famed filmic pairing, Aguirre: The Wrath Of God. The earlier film, made a decade before, shares other elements with Fitzcarraldo, which was written and directed by Herzog. The most obvious is that both involve river journeys in the Amazon, and both films have scenes of troublemakers being left in the jungle to fend for themselves. In Aguirre it's a horse, in Fitzcarraldo it's four humans. A less obvious commonality is that both films were shot in English, then dubbed into German. Thus, when one chooses the English language option on the DVD one is watching the film as it was originally made. This is how I watched it, and how all foreign language or foreign made DVDs should be packaged. In a visual medium there is absolutely no excuse for foreign films to not have available English dubbed soundtracks, for the reading of words necessarily diminishes the visual impact of the film on first watching.
However, this film would still be great even were it only available with subtitles. Yet, if a viewer is expecting another vintage over the top performance by Kinski, he will be disappointed, for Kinski's titular character, whose real name is Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Fitzcarraldo is a local nickname based on a mispronunciation), is far more understated a role than in his other collaborations with Herzog. It's a great performance, nonetheless, which proves a) that Kinski was one of the Twentieth Century's greatest actors and b) how felicitous it was for Herzog that his original choice for the role, Jason Robards, dropped out due to illness. While I think Robards was a fine actor, he was not near the pure acting talent that Kinski was. Another fact gleaned from the DVD commentary is that Herzog had a sidekick role for Robards' version of Fitzcarraldo, with rock star Mick Jagger in the lead role. A few scenes of this pairing appear in Herzog's acclaimed documentary on Kinski called My Best Fiend, and they are absolutely terrible. That Jack Nicholson was also considering taking the lead role, but declined it, is another instance of fortuity's role in great art.
There are many little moments in the film, that are the realism in the `eye level realism', which make the film seem less like a film and more as if a camera had been snuck aboard a real life adventure. This is where the film's greatness really comes into focus, for so few other directors ever have such moments in their films. Herzog often calls these moments ecstatic truths, but they are great because they are not really ecstatic, merely ordinary, but displaced in narrative space and time so that they take on a meaning and metaphor that is not immanent. As example, there are the young children who stare at the jail Fitz is held in after an incident at a rubber baron's party. The police chief lets him out because the children will not flee, and one child plays a fiddle for days on end. Why? There is no explanation, but oddities like this occur in life far more often than they ever appear in film. There's the tiny black employee of Fitz's, who has guarded his railroad property from Indians, not knowing it's another project he has returned on. His odd but endearing behavior seems real precisely because only an oddball would defend another man's property without pay for months on end. There is the black umbrella that floats toward the boat as a seeming warning from the local Indians. There is the celebration by the Indians after the boat has made it over the mountain, where native women squirt their breast milk into bowls to be drunk.
Then, at film's end, there is a close moment between Fitz and Captain Paul. Yet, Fitz whispers it into the Captain's ear, so the viewer never knows what is said. Having seen the more recent Lost In Translation, where what was whispered between that film's two lead characters was taken as a `stroke of genius' by tyro director Sofia Coppola, it does not surprise me that she stole that idea from Herzog. In this film, since it is a greater film, and the two characters have gone through far more, the gesture is even more powerful and moving. The very fact that a moment like that goes uncommented upon by all the major critics of the film- then and now, yet when it appears in a film like Coppola's is lauded without surcease, shows how far much more a film like Fitzcarraldo has to offer than a rather light piece of fluff like Lost In Translation. This is because such moments are in surfeit in Fitzcarraldo, whereas they are the centerpieces of Hollywood tripe. But, as Captain Paul mentions to Fitz, there are two kinds of silences- the good and the bad. Oddly, the lack of praise for such a great moment is one of the good silences. Enjoy the gilt.
 The Dreamer July 24, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
German Film with English subtitles set in rural Peru in the early 1900's. The lead actor is Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald. He's an Irishman who is nicknamed Fitzcarraldo and is played by Klaus Kinski. The autobiographical story is inspired by a Peruvian rubber baron by the name of Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald.
Fitzcarraldo loves opera and dreams of building an opera house in the jungle. In order to finance his dream, he sets out on an effort to secure an unclaimed part of jungle to harvest rubber trees. He sinks all of his money and his girlfriend's (a brothel owner) money in the venture - and is mocked by everyone in doing so. They say this will be his second grandiose failure after his failed attempt in building a transcontinental railroad on the continent.
To get to the rubber trees, he has to pull a 3-story, 320 ton steamship up over a steep mountain with the help of hundreds of unfriendly native Indians.
My recap:
1) Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarrcaldo is magnificent. The Dreamer is cast in his shocking white hair and his white suit - he stands out with his eternal optimism and among the drab gray colored attired skeptics.
2) Pulling the 300+ ton steamship over the mountain (without special effects apparently) is an engineering marvel
3) Scenes in the jungle, on the river, the mountains - were spectacular.
4) The film is 160 minutes long - plodding in a number of sections - and approximately 30-40 minutes too long in my opinion - and this was the underlying basis for my 3 rating.
Over-Romanticized and Underwhelming July 11, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
It seems that most fans of this film waste no time in remarking upon the wonder of Hertzog and crew actually transporting a steamboat over a mountain. There's no doubt that such an endeavor was the pinnacle of Hertzog's method directing, eclipsing the perilous jungle journey of Aguirre: The Wrath of God, the 30,000 live rats unleashed in Nosferatu, and the famous hypnosis experiment in Heart of Glass. These are the sorts of stories that eager young film students eat up and stow away for good party conversation at a later date. These are not, however, ingredients that make a great film.
Indeed, most of Fitzcarraldo's allure seems based upon what happened behind the scenes rather that what's occurring on screen. Sure, Hertzog provides plenty of breath-taking shots throughout the film, and Kinsky does an adequate job of expressing desires that are less manic and exaggerated than his own, but everything else simply falls short. The supporting cast is woefully under-developed, notably including Fitzcarraldo's girlfriend/financer, who conveys all the blind obedience and personality of a faithful dog. Worse yet are the three main crew members, none of whom ever manage to attain any reasonable level of characterization even after two and a half hours. In Aguirre, you often knew everything you needed to know about a crew member just by the way Hertzog shot his face. That sort of depth and compassion is lacking here. In one particularly memorable scene, the four member crew (Fitzcarraldo included) are slowly eating dinner while surrounded by the fixated eyes of armed Amazonian natives. As the camera moves to each crew member's face, one would expect to see them reacting in their own unique ways, somehow defining their characters through varied responses to such a terrifying moment. Instead, they all look uniformly worried and mildly hungry.
Add to this the awkward, dated Euro-1970s soundtrack which, while somehow appropriate in its irony with Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht, elicits all the retro wonder of hairy mustached men in short-shorts here. Then, of course, there's the plodding 157 minute run-time, deserved in a rich and purposeful film like Aguirre, but utterly wasteful here. All of this adds up to a recipe for tedium. I'm willing to bet that, upon repeated viewings, most avid fans of Fitzcarraldo skip roughly two hours into the film where the boat begins to ascend the mountain. That, the boat's devastation in the rapids even later on, and the film's conclusion seem to be all that make this film worth seeing. The rest certainly doesn't hold up to Hertzog's other great works, nor Kinsky's.
There's no doubt that the story behind this film is far more riveting than the film, itself. For that reason, I strongly encourage viewers to watch "Burden of Dreams," the story behind Fitzcarraldo, rather than Fitzcarraldo, itself. Learn more about the boat ascending the mountain, the near destruction of the steamboat while the film crew was aboard, Kinsky's temper tantrums, and the natives that offered to kill him. Those are the things that seem to have made this film a legend, not the film itself.
 The conquistador of the useless July 6, 2008
Along with "Aguirre, The Wrath of God," "Fitzcarraldo" ranks as the best collaboration between Herzog and Kinski. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it comes close to being the best thing that either of them did, Herzog as director and Kinski as actor.
In both "Aguirre" and "Fitzcarraldo," the theme is humanity against an unforgiving, primitive nature, symbolized by clotted, almost impenetrable jungle and indigeneous tribes whose customs and beliefs are baffling and unpredictable to "civilized" minds. Both Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo are defeated by nature, but whereas Aquirre is destroyed by his defeat, Fitzcarraldo triumphs in defeat. I suspect that one of the points Herzog wants to make is that the unbridled lust for power, manifested by Aguirre, is a different kind of human ambition than the sheer love of beauty that animates Fitzcarraldo. The former is easy to defeat. The latter may fall, but it will inevitably rise again. Even nature--tribal children and animals in the film--responds to beauty.
The great irony here is that beauty, unlike power, is "useless." It has no obvious utility in the "real world." That's why at one point a skeptical entrepreneur mocks Fitzcarraldo and his dreams to bring opera to the jungle by calling him a "conquistador of the useless." This line reminds me of an observation once made by Henry David Thoreau. After remarking that there were plenty of schools and clubs for the "diffusion of useful knowledge," he said "methinks we need a school for the diffusion of useless knowledge." It's the "useless" things in life that reveal life's depth.
The acting in "Fitzcarraldo" is superb. Kinski shows a tender, lovable side in his portrayal of the title character that's both remarkable and in wonderful contrast to the crazy Kinski who too often explodes on the screen (although apparently Kinski the man was so emotionally volatile on the set that one of the tribal extras, offended by his craziness, offered to kill him if only Herzog would give the word). Claudia Cardinale as Molly is exquisite, and the chemistry (as they say) between her and Kinski works well.
Finally, the cinematography is indescribable. Of course the temptation is to focus on the long shots of the ship "Molly" being hauled up the Peruvian mountainside. But every scene in the film, from the opening shots of the well-lighted opera house facade standing starkly against a jet-black sky, to the final scene of "The Puritans," is breathtaking.
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