Fitzcarraldo
by Werner Herzog
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Claudia Cardinale, Jos? Lewgoy, Klaus Kinski, Miguel ?ngel Fuentes, Paul HittscherDirector: Werner Herzog
Brand: KINSKI,KLAUS
Cinematographer: Thomas Mauch
Producer: Werner Herzog
Writer: Werner Herzog
Producer: Lucki Stipetic
Producer: Renzo Rossellini
Producer: Walter Saxer
Producer: Willi Segler
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 0
Audio: German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 158 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-11-16
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Movie Reviews of Fitzcarraldo
Movie Review: Herzog's films are deeply personal, visually exciting and uncompromising...
Summary: 3 Stars
His films are perfect examples of the European tradition of the 'auteur' film, in which the director is seen as the originating and creative force behind the work... But there is also a sense that Herzog's visionary monomaniacs function as the director's alter ego, embodying the heroic status of the auteur, always struggling against recalcitrant reality to fulfill his dream...
This seems especially true of "Fitzcarraldo," which, sets a hundred years ago, begins with an Irish colonist who had a passion for opera rowing 1,200 miles down a South American river, accompanied by the madam of a brothel, in order to hear the great Caruso perform...
Inspired by this experience, Fitzcarraldo embarks on a grandiose plan to open up the Amazonian jungle to river transport, providing access to new rubber plantations and thereby making enough money to build an opera house...
Herzog's favorite actor, Klaus Kinski, is as appropriately manic as Fitzcarraldo, eyes glittering madly as he pursues his vision... In the central sequence he organizes a tribe of Indians to help him pull a steamboat across a mountain in order to by-pass dangerous rapids...
"Fitcarraldo" seems by turns admiring of its hero's megalomania and mocking of his hubris, with no illusions about the cynical exploitation of the region's riches by the rubber barons whom Fitzcarraldo tries to defeat by cleverness... Ultimately though, it is the sheer spectacle which we remember...
Summary of Fitzcarraldo
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
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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