It is incredible how there are times when reality is better than fiction, such is the case of Fitzcarraldo. The story goes that Fitzcarraldo faced hostile Indians, snakes, disease, and unspeakable hardship while using indigenous labor to pull, haul, and hoist a ship up a mountain in the Amazon jungle. The baron, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known as Fitzcarraldo, had noticed that there was a patch of undeveloped land that was rich in rubber but unreachable due to the Pongo das Mortes (Death Rapids).
Fitzcarraldo’s dream was to build an opera house in the jungle city of Iquitos, but he needed the funds to achieve his dream. He had tried various ways to find funding, but to no avail.
He finally convinced his girlfriend, who ran a brothel in Iquitos, to finance his rubber expedition. He figured he could get to the undeveloped 400-square-mile parcel by going upriver on a parallel tributary and moving his 30-ton boat across an isthmus upstream of the rapids, filling the boat with rubber, floating the boat through the rapids to Iquitos and take advantage of the reward and make your dream of bringing opera to Iquitos come true.
The story continues when Fitzcarraldo ventures into hostile indigenous territory. His crew is scared and abandons the expedition, Fitzcarraldo is surrounded by hostile Indians who block his return route. He realizes that the Indians believe in a river god and decides to see if his boat will meet theological requirements. He uses the music of his hero, the opera singer Enrico Caruso, to quell the tribe and gain their support.
After months of pulling and pushing the task was completed, the ship moved over a mountain to the Ucayali River. A great party has taken place to celebrate the task. Late at night, while the crew sleeps a drunken stupor, the chief of the Indians cuts the mooring to appease the river god and the empty boat floats down the river through the rapids and back to Iquitos.
It seems that Fitzcarraldo’s dream has been dashed, but once back in Iquitos, he sells his boat and uses the proceeds to bring the Manaus Colombia opera to Iquitos to play a command performance on the boat’s deck as it floats into port. from Iquitos.
In reality Fitzcarraldo was really Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald son of an American father and a Peruvian mother. Not the benevolent figure portrayed in the film, but a ruthless conquistador who killed and defeated the indigenous people and forced them to work as slaves or die for his own exploitation.
In fact, he moved a boat across an isthmus, but first had slave labor dismantle it and completed his task of filling it with rubber and his own pockets. Despite his brutality, he was a pioneer and explorer who chartered the Madre de Dios region of Peru, founded the city of Puerto Maldonaldo, and explored what is now the Manu Reserve. He later died when his boat got caught in a whirlpool, the boat sank and he died, but the story doesn’t end there.
Intrigued by Fitzcarraldo’s story, famed director Werner Herzog set out on a quest to make an epic film about the rubber magnate. He cast Jason Robards as Fitzcarraldo and Mick Jagger as Wilber (Fitzcarraldo’s partner).
The first hurdle came when they were five weeks into filming and 40% of shooting was complete and Robards fell ill with dysentery and his doctors would not allow him to return to complete the film. Then Mick Jagger’s concert and album commitments force him to drop the project, leaving Herzog with a half-finished film and his two stars jumping ship.
Most directors would have licked their wounds and gone home, not Herzog. He went back to the drawing board to refinance and recast the film, this time with Klaus Kinski in the lead role, but this was only the beginning of his troubles.
Herzog had negotiated with the Aguaruna Indians to support his project, but he did not realize that he had stepped into a political nightmare. A border skirmish between Peru and Ecuador had everyone on edge. The Indians had become disenchanted with the film and became hostile towards the entire project. Rumors that Herzog planned to turn the filming ground into a tourist mecca angered the Indians.
As in the Amazon, rumors turned into wild tales and wild tales turned into bizarre action as the film project catalyzed and unified Aguarunenses. The Indians found it threatening when a group of men camped together without women. They were gathered by men without women before the battle.
Rumors then spread that Herzog had exterminated two Indian villages and participated in the German Holocaust. The Aguarunenses, dressed in war paint, surrounded the camp and ordered everyone to leave. They burned the camp and celebrated the act of driving the white man off his land.
Once again, most would have given up and gone home. No Herzog, the problems continued as the Amazon experienced a severe drought that grounded the ship, crew members died in a plane crash, people were injured, many contracted malaria, and there is a story of one being bitten by the deadly bushmaster snake. They gave him an ultimatum, die in the jungle or cut his leg with a chainsaw, he opted for the latter. The crew went crazy, the constant rain, mishaps, and continual problems with the Indians, including people getting shot with arrows.
Kinski was on a constant rampage, in fact, at one point, the Indian chief offered to kill him if Herzog gave him permission, an action that Herzog himself had contemplated. Hookers, cold beer, and masato, a fermented drink made by chewing cassava root and spitting it into a canoe, kept the lid on the tinderbox, and eventually the film was finished after four years of agonizing effort, along with a “making of the Fitzcarraldo ” called Load of Dreams.
Filming and moving a 340-tonne ship through a mountain without special effects was no easy task, but Herzog accomplished what the real Fitzcarrald would never have attempted.
El Fitzcarraldo won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. Today there are still remnants of Fiscarraldo scattered around Iquitos. Fitzcarrald’s real home is now the Micobank which stands on the corner of Próspero street. Original producer Walter Saxer runs a hotel and relaxing place to have a cold beer called Casa Fiscarraldo and one of the original actors Huerequeque, who played the ship’s cook. , runs a bar on the Nanay River.
Carlos Fitzcarrald’s original house still stands on the corner of Próspero street in Iquitos, now a bank but still the same clay-built building.
