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Shooting Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog undertook the most insane project of his
entire career as a filmmaker. Has the eccentric director already been infamous
for obsessive, fanatic and titanic filmic attempts to portray reality itself,
with Fitzcarraldo he was about to go even further than before.
Everything in Fitzcarraldo is real. No camera tricks, no special effects, no
miniatures - Herzog insists on framing nothing else but the truth.
Statements on Fitzcarraldo extremely vary: some critics regard the film as a
masterpiece, others as "cinematic wanking" - However, one can
generally say, that the story behind it, is more interesting than the film itself.
More remarkable than the final result, is that what Herzog accomplished on the
process of filming.
In a way, Fitzcarraldo is a film, Herzog made mostly for himself.
Few movies
have as troubled a production history as Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.
Principal photography was 40 percent complete when the actor playing
Fitzcarraldo, Jason Robards, became so seriously ill that he was forced to quit
the production. After many production delays, the movie's other main actor, Mick
Jagger, had to leave for a prior commitment (a Rolling Stones' concert tour).
Virtually all of the film footage shot by this point was now unusable. After a
year of filmmaking, director Herzog had to start over from scratch.
Converting the two lead characters into a single character, Herzog turned to his frequent collaborator, actor Klaus Kinski. According to Herzog, he didn't cast Kinski initially because he thought Kinski would go "totally bonkers" if trapped on location in the Amazon during the production's lengthy shooting schedule. Herzog's fears were well founded. Once shooting resumed with Kinski in the lead role, Kinski flew into daily rages. Much of Herzog's time was devoted to holding Kinski together. Kinski became so difficult to work with that an Indian chief (who had a small role in the movie) went to Herzog and offered to murder Kinski. The Indians hated him. They weren't used to people ranting and raving at the slightest provocation.
But problems with actors were only part of the many complications faced by
Herzog. While the crew was filming near the border of Peru and Ecuador, a border
war broke out between the two countries, and soon afterwards, soldiers burned
the movie's production camp to the ground. But Herzog's biggest enemy may have
been the weather: he found himself working during the largest drought in 65
years. River levels plunged to depths of two feet or less. As a result, the
movie's steamship became stranded for months on a sand bar while waiting for
rains to return. However, when rains came, Herzog found himself working during
the wildest rainy season in history.
One crew member was bitten by a snake with venom so poisonous that cardiac
arrest typically followed within seconds. Realizing what had happened, the crew
member picked up a chain saw and cut off his own foot. Another man was paralyzed.
Another man drowned. When Herzog talks about the movie's climactic scene, which
involves a steamboat drifting down a river, he tells us how they had to lash
down one of the actors to the helm for fear he would fly through the windows
when the ship crashed against rocks.
After the cinematographer's hand was split open trying to film this sequence, he
underwent a 2½ hour operation to put his hand back together again--and no
anesthesia was available. As he screamed and thrashed in agony, one of the two
camp prostitutes (!) calmed him by pressing his head between her breasts. (According
to Herzog, a Catholic priest urged him to include prostitutes as part of the
movie's production crew or the men would go crazy in the jungle.)
While Herzog complains that Les Blank's documentary Burden Of Dreams was responsible for creating the notion that Herzog was a daredevil while filming Fitzcarraldo, almost everything Herzog says indicates Les Blank wasn't far off the mark. However, if Herzog hadn't been such a daredevil, it's doubtful that Fitzcarraldo would be such an enthralling experience. We now live in an age when computerized digital effects can be used to create almost anything that filmmakers can imagine. But when you're watching Fitzcarraldo, you know you aren't seeing digital effects. You can trust your eyes.
Fitzcarraldo won the "Best Direction Award" at the Cannes Film Festival.
Werner Herzog:
Herzog on...
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