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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Brand: KINSKI,KLAUS DVD Layers: 2 DVD Sides: 1 EAN: 0013131093896 Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Starz / Anchor Bay Languages: Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay MPN: 013131093896 Number Of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Publisher: Starz / Anchor Bay Release Date: November 16, 1999 Running Time: 158 minutes Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay Theatrical Release Date: October 10, 1982 Editorial Review: Product Description: 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 Amazon.com: 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 Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Ship of StateI will never forget seeing "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" some 20 years ago. It is to this day one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen. Somehow "Fitzcarraldo" got past me, and I have been trying to see it ever since. It did not do for me what "Aguirre" once did, but this may have as much or more to do with my own shrunken state as it does with the film's limitations. If the film is "just" an historical anecdote, a story, then it cannot be faulted. The film is told well. It is filmed beautifully. ... Read More Rating: - Herzog scoresI first watched Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo back in the late 1980s, on PBS, and found it to be a great film. All these years later I still find it to be a great film, if not quite in a league with Herzog and Klaus Kinski's other most famed filmic pairing, Aguirre: The Wrath Of God. The earlier film, made a decade before, shares other elements with Fitzcarraldo, which was written and directed by Herzog. The most obvious is that both involve river journeys in the Amazon, and both films have scenes ... Read More Rating:  - The DreamerGerman Film with English subtitles set in rural Peru in the early 1900's. The lead actor is Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald. He's an Irishman who is nicknamed Fitzcarraldo and is played by Klaus Kinski. The autobiographical story is inspired by a Peruvian rubber baron by the name of Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald. Fitzcarraldo loves opera and dreams of building an opera house in the jungle. In order to finance his dream, he sets out on an effort to secure an unclaimed part of jungle to harvest rubber trees. ... Read More Rating: - Over-Romanticized and UnderwhelmingIt seems that most fans of this film waste no time in remarking upon the wonder of Hertzog and crew actually transporting a steamboat over a mountain. There's no doubt that such an endeavor was the pinnacle of Hertzog's method directing, eclipsing the perilous jungle journey of Aguirre: The Wrath of God, the 30,000 live rats unleashed in Nosferatu, and the famous hypnosis experiment in Heart of Glass. These are the sorts of stories that eager young film students eat up and stow away for good party conversation ... Read More Rating:  - The conquistador of the uselessAlong with "Aguirre, The Wrath of God," "Fitzcarraldo" ranks as the best collaboration between Herzog and Kinski. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it comes close to being the best thing that either of them did, Herzog as director and Kinski as actor. In both "Aguirre" and "Fitzcarraldo," the theme is humanity against an unforgiving, primitive nature, symbolized by clotted, almost impenetrable jungle and indigeneous tribes whose customs and beliefs are baffling and unpredictable to "civilized" minds. ... Read More |
