Fitzcarraldo

Plot

Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.

About Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo () is a 1982 epic adventure-drama film written, produced, and directed by Werner Herzog. The film stars Klaus Kinski as Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irish would-be rubber baron known in Peru as "Fitzcarraldo", who is determined to transport a steamship over a mountain in the Amazon rainforest and thereby access a rich rubber territory, with the ultimate goal of using the wealth to build an opera house in the area. The character was inspired by Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald, who once had a disassembled steamboat transported over the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald by natives. The film had a troubled production, chronicled in the documentary by Les Blank Burden of Dreams (1982). Herzog had his crew attempt to manually haul the 320-ton steamship up a steep hill, made difficult by mud and faulty mechanical parts. Native extras clashed with the filming environment and distrusted Herzog, while also suffering three injuries during tribal tensions. The film's original star Jason Robards became sick halfway through filming, so Herzog hired Kinski, with whom he had previously clashed violently during production of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and Woyzeck (1979). Their fourth collaboration fared no better. When shooting was nearly complete, the chief of the Machiguenga tribe, whose members were used extensively as extras, asked Herzog if…

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