Word: fitzcarraldo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...like inviting Paris Hilton to a party. He'll be on the next flight to Doomsville, as when he read that a volcano was to erupt on Guadeloupe; off he went to tempt death and came back with the spectacular documentary La Soufrière. On the Amazon epic Fitzcarraldo, he took his crew hundreds of miles from the nearest city and had them lug a 320-ton riverboat overland and up steep hills. He found a suitably lush location on the Amazon and ran into the longest dry spell in the region's history. "I shouldn't make movies anymore...
...stature as his generation's most daring, most distinctive filmmaker and one of its signature eccentrics does not automatically endear Herzog to Hollywood. Though estimable actors from Claudia Cardinale to Tim Roth have graced his films and though in the late '70s he had a project (Fitzcarraldo) that was to be produced by Francis Ford Coppola and star Jack Nicholson, Herzog knows that in the U.S. the big-money guys are as averse to risk as he is addicted...
...German director's movie sojourns take him not just to remote corners of Peru, Alaska and Thailand but also to the uncharted interior of man's highest, most lunatic dreams. In a 46-year career of great fiction films (Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Heart of Glass; Nosferatu; Fitzcarraldo) and in a string of amazing, hallucinatory documentaries (The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, The White Diamond, Grizzly Man), Herzog, 64, has trekked into the emotional wilderness to capture on film humanity's heart of darkness, heart of hope...
...doing it, and keeps demanding nearly as much of his actors as of himself. He hypnotized the actors in Heart of Glass. He cast Bruno S., who had spent decades in mental institutions, as the star of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek. When Nicholson backed out of Fitzcarraldo, Herzog got Jason Robards, who contracted amoebic dysentery and was forced to quit the shoot. (Mick Jagger, another member of the cast, also had to leave.) Herzog wound up with Klaus Kinski, an actor so extreme and unruly, he was his own volcano. They made five films together; Herzog...
...almost goes without saying that Dengler's story would attract (and obsess) Werner Herzog, a director drawn to portrayals of men driven to extreme behavior in extreme situations. Herzog's features - Aguirre the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo - and his conditions - notably the great Grizzly Man- provide ample and thrilling testimony to the uniqueness of his enterprise. He is willing to go places no other filmmaker goes and he simply has no competitors when it comes to strenuous risk-taking. About a decade ago he made a hypnotic documentary about Dengler's exploits, entitled Little Dieter Needs...