Obsessed With Film

Greatest Movie Scenes #79 - FITZCARRALDO

Klaus Kinski loved a confrontation, and it’s refreshing to see the wild-eyed blonde Teuton put up a gutsy front against someone who isn’t regular director/chosen nemesis Werner Herzog for a change. Fitzcarraldo sees Kinski at his dynamic finest playing Irish idealist Brian “Fitz” Sweeney Fitzgerald; “Conquistador of the Useless” and eccentric cultural visionary.

As a lover of music, Fitz is determined to build an opera house and bring his passion to the Peruvian jungle backwater town of Iquitos and will not let any obstacle obstruct his obsession. In Werner Herzog’s epic 1982 film we see Kinski’s character take on - amongst other things - a mutinous crew, mysterious tribes and raging rapids for the sake of realising his dream. It’s the party sequence early on though that gives us a real grasp of Fitz’s dogged resolve as he faces down the highfalutin rubber barons who scoff and rubbish his plans.

With Herzog’s masterful hand in control and Kinski’s energy on display, the clash between the imaginative Fitz and the emotionally-dead aristocrats makes for a crucial and poignant moment. Unable to make them invest in his ambition to “give expression to our greatest feelings”, Fitz is triumphantly turned out of the high society shindig after a stirring mini-sermon evermore enthused to achieve his grand ambition. You just know that he’s fanatic enough to find the funds for his opera house and will go to whatever lengths to get it; even if he has to carry a boat over a mountain…

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