Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo is a 1982 West German epic adventure-drama film written, produced, and directed by Werner Herzog, and starring Klaus Kinski as would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who is determined to transport a steamship over a steep hill to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon basin. The character was inspired by Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald, who once transported a disassembled steamboat over the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald. The film had a troubled production, chronicled in the documentary Burden of Dreams (1982). Herzog had his crew attempt to manually haul the 320-ton steamship up a steep hill, leading to three injuries. 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 they should kill Kinski for him. Herzog declined. Plot In the early part of the 20th century, Iquitos, Peru, a small city east of the Andes in the Amazon basin, is experiencing rapid growth due to a rubber boom, and many Europeans and North African Sephardic Jewish immigrants are settling in the city, bringing their cultures with them. One immigrant, an Irishman named Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (known by the locals as "Fitzcarraldo"), is a lover of opera and a great fan of the internationally-renowned Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. He dreams of building an opera house in Iquitos, but, although he has an indomitable spirit, he has little capital.