Fitzcarraldo

Werner Herzog (1982)

Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, José Lewgoy Rated PG Run time 158 mins
EXPLORING HERZOG WEEKEND
Workshop with Richard Cupidi from 2:30pm, film will start at 4pm.
Winner for Best Director at Cannes 1982
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 36th BAFTA’s
In this, another of the five films that were directed by Herzog that he appeared in, Kinski plays an Irish adventurer in early 20th-century Peru who dreams of building an opera house in a remote Amazon port and bringing Enrico Caruso there.
The images of a large steamboat being dragged across a steep isthmus with the help of hostile natives is never forgotten and this is a stunning, grandiose, deeply romantic work, shot under horrendous conditions that took four years to make.
Not to be missed – especially if not seen before!
77% – Rotten Tomatoes
7.4/10 – IMDB
“Herzog charts an ironically circular course around an indulged, benevolent Aguirre; perversely illuminates colonialism with surrealism; and demonstrates once again in his always suspect yet somehow irresistible way that ‘only dreamers move mountains’.”
“It’s a stunning spectacle, an adventure-comedy not quite like any other, and the most benign movie ever made about 19th-century capitalism running amok.”

Great Movie: Fitzcarraldo – Roger Ebert