Fitzcarraldo - An Allegory of Colonialism

Reel Whirled Peas



Roger Ebert wrote “Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” is one of the great visions of the cinema, and one of the great follies”. Vincent Canby says “(It) may well be a madman’s dream, but it’s also a fine, quirky, fascinating movie. It’s a stunning spectacle, an adventure-comedy not quite like any other, and the most benign movie ever made about 19th century capitalism running amok”.

The film is full of wonderful images of Amazonian colonialism at the turn of the 20th century. Spanish rubber barons have put tens of thousands of Indians to work tapping, emulsifying and blocking the rubber from hundreds of square miles of trees. The center of the rubber trade, Manaus, Brazil becomes, according to the manager of the world-class opera house there, the wealthiest city in the world.

In fact, the film opens showing that very opera house, where Enrico Caruso and a very mannish Sarah Bernhardt are performing a Verdi opera (actually, Bernhardt is lip-syncing). This performance is the reason Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald and his brothel-owning mistress, Molly, have traveled 1,200 miles down the Amazon from the jungle village of Iquitos, Peru. Fitzgerald is called Fitzcarraldo by Indians unable to pronounce Fitzgerald. Fitzcarraldo undertakes several business ventures, all of them failures, in order to raise the money needed to build an opera house in Iquitos. He decides to farm rubber, but the only land available is inaccessible due to deadly rapids and equally deadly headhunting tribes. Fitzcarraldo, using his admiring Molly’s money, buys a large steamboat. He figures he can take an alternative river into the jungle, and then transport the boat over a mountain to the other river, far above the angry rapids. That adventure is heart of the story, and for me it’s an allegory of colonialism.

Fitzcarraldo has a dream of bringing European culture to the remote world, and making some money doing it. For him, culture is European opera, and for opera he proselytizes with the same vigor as Christian missionaries. He is a man of ideas, but needs to surround himself with workers to execute his vision. Fitzcarraldo’s first hire is a Dutchman, a fellow European who can be trusted, to captain his ship. Then he hires the cook, a drunken native who can translate the languages. The cook serves as Fitzcarraldo’s liaison with the crew, a rag-tag group of Indians. A large, powerful Indian mechanic comes with the boat, compliments of the boat’s seller, Don Aquillino, a rubber baron who wants to be kept apprised of Fitzcarraldo’s progress. The roster is set, looking very much like a standard colony: European adventurer/entrepreneur, his white general manager, his native lackey, a spy, and a crew occasionally on the verge of rebellion.

The boat heads upstream, toward the next frontier, much to the chagrin of the crew. Soon the unseen headhunters surround them, and the crew jump ship, leaving Fitzcarraldo and his three main hands to fend for themselves. Fitzcarraldo finds a way to connect with the natives. He displays something new and interesting to them – his recordings of Caruso. They are intrigued by the music, and the boat, which is far grander than anything seen before. The colonizer has put a spell on the natives, and, rather than killing the intruders, the natives agree to work for him. They help him transport the boat over the mountain. When two young Indians are accidentally killed, the Indians stop work for some time, causing Fitzcarraldo to worry that they will quit for good, leaving him with a boat halfway up a mountain and no workforce to complete the task. Or, even worse, that they may rebel, and kill the remaining crew. Those are anxieties faced by the colonizers as well.

Settlers were able to control their colonized natives in a number of ways. Often, control came by force. In other cases it came through monetary compensation. Fitzcarraldo had neither device. However, he learned, through the cook/interpreter, that the tribe held dear a legend about a “great white god”, who would calm the rapids and lead them to a place of peace. Fitzcarraldo exploited this myth, and with it he held sway over this tribe that held his life in their hands.

Together, the crew and the tribe transported the boat over the mountain, with the kind of cooperation necessary in every successful colonial venture. After they got the boat to the other river, there was a grand celebration, everyone taking equal pleasure in the achievement. As Fitzcarraldo and the crew slept the next morning, the Indians cut the boat from its moorings, and sent it toward the rapids, essentially an act of liberation. The boat ran the rapids, and arrived, badly damaged but floating, back where it started. The jungle again belonged to the natives. The colonizers moved on to other things.

Fitzcarraldo sold the boat back to Don Aquillino, securing enough profit to hire the opera company to perform one time on the boat as it passes along the coast of Iquitos. Fitzcarraldo is satisfied. He has brought opera to the jungle.