Burden of Dreams Page #2

armed Indians surround the film camp...

and order everyone

who's still there to leave.

When the camp is empty,

the Aguarunas burn it to the ground.

The last members

of Herzog's crew flee downriver...

flying white flags from their canoe.

It takes Herzog 13 months

to find a new location for thejungle camp.

In January, 1981,

filming finally begins in Iquitos...

1,500 miles north of the new camp.

Iquitos is a river port city near

the headwaters of the Amazon in northern Peru...

with a jet airport

and a population of 200,000.

It was originally a rubber boomtown

built at the turn of the century...

when giant fortunes were being made

overnight in the rubber business.

This is the historical period

in which Herzog's film story is set.

The cast features

Jason Robards as Fitzcarraldo...

a poor, charming Irishman

who's obsessed with grand opera.

Fitzcarraldo is determined

to build a great opera house in Iquitos...

where his idol,

Enrico Caruso, can perform.

His first scheme involves trying to convince

Iquitos's high society to finance the project...

but to no avail.

Mick Jagger plays Fitzcarraldo's sidekick...

a simpleminded actor named Wilbur.

Hey!

Hey! Hey!

Ho! Ho!

- We want the opera in Iquitos!

- We want the opera in Iquitos!

We need opera here!

Don't you want...

- We need the opera in Iquitos!

- Music in your souls?

- In your ear!

- Come! Come and join us!

Jesus.

Momento. Un momento.

And therefore,

since I cannot prove a lover...

to entertain

these fair well-spoken days...

I am determined

to prove a villain...

and hate the idle pleasures

of these days.

Wilbur, you are definitely my man.

Five weeks after filming begins,

with 40% of the picture completed...

Jason Robards comes down with

a bad case of amebic dysentery.

He flies home to recover,

and his doctor forbids him to return to the set.

For Herzog,

this is an agonizing setback.

He'll have to start all over

with a new leading actor...

and his backers are pulling out.

For six weeks, Herzog puts

the entire production on hold...

while he goes looking for another star.

Then Jagger drops out too.

Commitments for a new album

and a concert tour...

make it impossible for him to stay

the extra months needed...

to reshoot the film from scratch.

And I have decided

that I would not replace his part.

You can't replace him.

So I think that's, uh, biggest loss

that I have had in my career...

as someone who makes films.

When I came back to Germany,

and I tried to hold all the investors together...

they said to me,

"Well, how can you continue?

Can you - Uh, do you have the strength

or the will or the enthusiasm or so?"

And I said,

"How can you ask this question? It is -

"If I abandon this project,

I would be a man without dreams...

and I don't want to live like that. "

I - I - I live my life,

or I end my life with this project.

In April, 1981...

Herzog's new leading man,

Klaus Kinski...

arrives at the Iquitos Airport.

And the filming of Fitzcarraldo

starts all over again.

Stop. Stop, stop, stop.

Bananas.!

- Bananas!

- Miguel Vzquez!

Come on.!

Miguel Vzquez.! Bananas.!

Cut. Okay.

Stop.

Fitzcarraldo lives

in the Belen district of Iquitos...

a collection of small houses in the shallow

floodwater at the edge of the Amazon...

that's hardly changed

in the last hundred years.

- I picture from this time -

- Klaus Kinski, the new Fitzcarraldo...

has appeared in more than 150 films.

Everything from Doctor Zhivago

to Herzog's Nosferatu.

This will be the fourth feature

he's done for Herzog.

In this scene, some of the local kids

are waiting for Fitzcarraldo to wake up...

hoping they'll get to hear

one ofhis precious Caruso records.

This is the Nario...

a boat that was built in 1902 in Glasgow.

And we found this boat in Colombia

on one of the Amazon tributaries.

Uh, it was used for-as a steamboat

up and down the Amazon...

and later on it was used

in the, uh, war against Colombia.

As a matter of fact, the peace treaty

was signed on that boat here.

It was very hard to move it here.

As you see, there are many leaks.

We had to fill the whole hull

with empty petrol drums.

And so we kept it afloat,

and we tugged it about, uh...

350 miles up the river,

and we put it here.

And it should be rusty, as it is.

And it will be one of the leading characters

in the picture that we are doing.

Italian film star Claudia Cardinale

plays Fitzcarraldo's lover, Molly...

the madam of an elegant brothel catering to

the wealthiest rubber barons in Iquitos.

She uses her contacts

to help him buy a steamship he needs...

to make enough money

to build the opera house.

Claudia, there is also one thing.

You could easily try to

open one of those doors.

- Yes. This one?

- Yeah. No, not this one.

- This here is closed.

- This one.

This one is closed.

So you can't do -

you can't do any-

- Yeah. No.

- No.

- You shouldn't open that one. Yes.

- I just try to open, but it's closed.

- That's the only one that you should not open.

- Okay.

Of course,

we need another boat going on the river.

And for this reason

we have bought another boat...

which has about the same size,

the same shape of the hull.

The Huallaga,

which was built in 1906.

And we rebuilt the whole boat,

and we repaired the engine...

and we'll need a third boat-

a look-alike.

No one knows how long it's going to take

to pull a real steamship over a hill in thejungle...

which is why Herzog needs three ships.

While one of the ships stays in Iquitos

and another goes over the hill...

Herzog can keep on shooting

with the third ship...

including a crucial scene

in the Pongo das Mortes...

the "Rapids of Death. "

The Huallaga may be destroyed in the Pongo.

We'll try to save it with, uh,

remote control from a helicopter.

I'm not 100% sure whether it will make it.

But I hope because there's

so much work and care and toil in it.

Many, many people have given

their sweat and their...

blood of their heart.

And it's really beautiful.

I- I like the boats very much.

Uh, very close to my heart.

I would like to keep them all.

Did you sail the ship

all the way up the river from Iquitos?

Yes. They had to come from Iquitos

all the way up here...

which was quite hard.

It's a very, very big distance.

Maybe 1,500 miles or 2,000 miles.

Between Rio Urubamba

and Rio Camisea...

we are pulling the boat now.

After shooting in Iquitos...

Herzog moves cast and crew

1,500 miles south...

to his newjungle location

on the Rio Camisea.

From Iquitos,

under the best of circumstances...

it takes a full day

to reach the camp by air...

with the last leg

in a small, single-engine plane...

and over two weeks by boat

when the rivers are navigable at all.

Since Herzog admits he could shoot

most of Fitzcarraldo right outside Iquitos...

some people think

the remotejungle location...

is just another example

ofhis insistence on making things tough.

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