werner herzog: conquest of the useless
Fitzcarraldo was first shown in 1982. The film tells the story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Fitzcarraldo). It's based on Carlos Fermin Fitzcarrald, a Peruvian rubber planter with Irish roots. This character lived in the Amazon region in the second half of the 19th Century and, inspired by Manaus, he wanted to take the opera to the town of Iquitos. It was because of that he got involved in the rubber industry and, amongst other things, he took a boat over a mountain from one river to another.
This film's always been one of my favourites. It doesn't turn up in the lists of the best films in history, and it probably doesn't deserve to. I'd say it isn't one of director Werner Herzog's best, but, ever since I first saw it, certain scenes from it never leave me. Recently I was reminded of it in a bookshop by a book cover and
title: The Conquest of the Useless.
The story of a journey made against the current. A passionate, wild hand-written diary. The story of times when making a film was an adventure.
Nature's force and beauty do not make a jungle paradise. If you live there, you'll see the relationships between the people who survive there are quite different. Children only play amongst themselves, there are no relationships between families, there's real live hate between one shack and another, from one family to another, one lineage contaminates another with its atmosphere of vengeance .
As you read it, you find out about the problems producing the film, the misunderstandings and everything that happens. At the beginning of the 80's there was no digital universe, no mobile phones or political correctness. Herzog, like
colonel Kurtz, burning with fever, wrote the story of part of a journey to the end of
a green hell. with trouble breathing and tiredness because of the mist, the trees stand up in an unreal world, unreal misery and there I am, like a line written in a language I don't understand, deeply scared .
At one moment, he writes in his diary, when he had not yet got Klaus Kinski to commit to the project, he thought of playing Fitzcarraldo himself: I would dare to do that because what I have to do and what the character in the film have to do have become the same thing .
Taking a ship over a mountain from one river to another was an epic adventure: filming in the middle of the Amazons was no lesser exploit. In the end Kinski played Fitzcarraldo. It was almost his last role. Because of his behaviour, the leader of the Kanpa Indians, who were the extras in the film, decided to kill him and asked Herzog for his permission. Herzog thanks them but said no. Just in case, he put the actor into a plane and sent him to Lima for a week.
The filming was long and difficult. It's easy to see that as you leaf through the diary. 30 years ago, when he was reaching the end of his tale, Herzog wrote without and pretensions: Today, November 4th 1981, just after midday, we have managed to take the boat from the Camisea river to the Urubamba river. Only one thing to add.
I've taken part in everything .
Herzog himself was later to say of this book:
This film's always been one of my favourites. It doesn't turn up in the lists of the best films in history, and it probably doesn't deserve to. I'd say it isn't one of director Werner Herzog's best, but, ever since I first saw it, certain scenes from it never leave me. Recently I was reminded of it in a bookshop by a book cover and
title: The Conquest of the Useless.
The story of a journey made against the current. A passionate, wild hand-written diary. The story of times when making a film was an adventure.
Nature's force and beauty do not make a jungle paradise. If you live there, you'll see the relationships between the people who survive there are quite different. Children only play amongst themselves, there are no relationships between families, there's real live hate between one shack and another, from one family to another, one lineage contaminates another with its atmosphere of vengeance .
As you read it, you find out about the problems producing the film, the misunderstandings and everything that happens. At the beginning of the 80's there was no digital universe, no mobile phones or political correctness. Herzog, like
colonel Kurtz, burning with fever, wrote the story of part of a journey to the end of
a green hell. with trouble breathing and tiredness because of the mist, the trees stand up in an unreal world, unreal misery and there I am, like a line written in a language I don't understand, deeply scared .
At one moment, he writes in his diary, when he had not yet got Klaus Kinski to commit to the project, he thought of playing Fitzcarraldo himself: I would dare to do that because what I have to do and what the character in the film have to do have become the same thing .
Taking a ship over a mountain from one river to another was an epic adventure: filming in the middle of the Amazons was no lesser exploit. In the end Kinski played Fitzcarraldo. It was almost his last role. Because of his behaviour, the leader of the Kanpa Indians, who were the extras in the film, decided to kill him and asked Herzog for his permission. Herzog thanks them but said no. Just in case, he put the actor into a plane and sent him to Lima for a week.
The filming was long and difficult. It's easy to see that as you leaf through the diary. 30 years ago, when he was reaching the end of his tale, Herzog wrote without and pretensions: Today, November 4th 1981, just after midday, we have managed to take the boat from the Camisea river to the Urubamba river. Only one thing to add.
I've taken part in everything .
Herzog himself was later to say of this book:
