Essential Cinema

Fitzcarraldo
Directed by Werner Herzog

Saturday, September 7, 6 pm | BUY TICKETS

$12 | $8 Speed members

“One of the great visions of the cinema, and one of the great follies. One would not have been possible without the other.”—Roger Ebert

Werner Herzog, known for the great lengths he takes in creating his films, crafts a backbreaking epic that ecstatically and self-reflectively treads the line between a portrait of madness and a genuine expression of obsession. Fitzcarraldo fictionalizes the crazed, true-life mission of South American rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski) to establish an opera house in the Peruvian jungle—which can only be accomplished by hauling a gigantic riverboat over a mountain. Shot without any special effects, the film’s fraught and Icarian production was filmed by documentarian Les Blank for his film Burden of Dreams. 1982, Germany/Peru, DCP, in German, Spanish, English, Shuar, and Italian with English subtitles, 158 minutes. Recommended for 16+.