Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37102 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-09-02
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 157 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Werner Herzog's lengthy 1982 fever dream is typical of the director's passion for boundless experience: the story concerns the title character's determination to open a shipping route over the Amazon as well as build an opera house (worthy of Caruso) at a river trading post. Klaus Kinski (star of Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God) plays the visionary/madman with a spooky dignity, and Herzog--as always--thrills to the mystic possibilities of filming where no one else would even think of placing a camera. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Widescreen (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs
Audio commentary with Director Werner Herzog, Producer Lucki Stepic and journalist Norman Itill
Theatrical trailers
Stills gallery
Talent bios
Languages: Dolby Digital 5.1/Dolby 2.0 English, German with optional English subtitles

Synopsis
Director Werner Herzog returns to the exotic locales and obsessive themes of previous works in his Amazon masterpiece, FITZCARRALDO. Klaus Kinski gives a terrifying and determined portrayal of mad genius Fitzcarraldo, whose twin goals of making a fortune off the Amazon rubber trade and bringing an opera house to the jungle give the film its crushing centerpiece--the maniacal leader's Sisyphean efforts at hauling a gigantic steamship over a mountain bank. The single-minded and wickedly energetic Fitzcarraldo moves mountains (and a boat) with his will and along the way acts out a stunning and emotional battle between man and nature, as in the similarly themed Herzog/Kinski collaboration AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD.
Herzog's razor-sharp attention to the minutiae of both Fitzcarraldo's madness and the jungle's corresponding apathy and enormity makes the film a breathtaking metaphor for civilization's impact on the natural world. The documentary style of the film (the cast and crew actually hauled the boat over the mountain) gives the tale an urgency and suspense that, combined with Kinski's bravado performance and Herzog's striking sense of landscape, make FITZCARRALDO an unforgettable experience.

Customer Reviews

an european epic
fitzcarraldo is probably the most epic film ever to come out of europe.klaus kinski replaces mick jagger & jason robards in the lead role which he was born to play. borrowing loosely from herzog's previous 'aguirre' and conrads 'heart of darkness' this is by all accounts a truly stunning piece of film making. herzog's severely focused direction brings out all the intensity in his leading man and with the strugggle of controlling an indigenous population and the practicality of raising the ship makes fitzcarraldo a truly uplifting experience

Great film, however...
This is a fantastic film, but one small word of warning - the subtitling on the DVD edition is terrible. Jumpy and with large parts of conversation missing, the subtitles mar what is an otherwise flawless film, and as such I was forced to deduct a star in the rating.

I would still highly recommend this film, a dazzling picture about one man's overwelming desire to bring his vision to life - an opera house in the South American jungle.

Magnificent film, but a shame about the subtitling
Nearly a quarter of a century on, Fitzcarraldo has lost none of its impact. One thing which makes it still stand out so much today is its reality - not the plot, which takes a small incident from forgotten history and exaggerates it into a grandiose epic on the reality of dreams, but the fact that, with the exception of what appears to be one superior model shot in the rapids sequence, everything you see is done for real. A real ship dragged over a real mountain by real extras in a real location. In the CGi era, it's almost like watching a documentary, with Herzog literally BECOMING Fitzcarraldo as he acts out his dreams for real.

For all the fireworks between Kinski and Herzog, they bring the best out of each other: Kinski is every inch the obsessed dreamer and you really believe he HAS to bring opera to the jungle in a way that you simply can't imagine Jason Robards pulling off (Robards left the film after falling ill: from the brief extracts of his scenes with Mick Jagger to appear in the documentary Burden of Dreams - not included on this disc but available separately from Criterion - it was a blessing in disguise for the film). What's more, by the end of the movie, you really feel that Fitzcarraldo has earned his small triumph, and the wondrous smiles on the faces of Kinski and Claudia Cardinale prove that cinema's greatest weapon is the human face.

It's just a shame that Anchor Bay's DVD misses several key lines in the subtitles from the superior German version, which meant skipping back the DVD to play it with the inferior English dub to catch the missing lines before switching back to German again, a sad blemish on an otherwise excellent disc.