Rubber sole

I may be the first customer in the history of Netflix to select Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo as the first film ever slotted into his queue. But I am certainly not the first to follow up this great movie with Burden of Dreams, a vaguely meta version of a "making-of" documentary about Herzog's quest deep into the Amazon rainforest to shoot the movie. Included on the DVD of the latter is "Dreams and Burdens," a retrospective of the documentary about the making of the original. Whew, that's exhaustive treatment -- all for an insanely ambitious, unrepeatable film whose documentation has been satirized and whose content has been celebrated in song.

I don't think I'll ever forget the image of Klaus Kinski perched on the bow of his steamship, cruising up through the rainforest as he breathes in the sound of Caruso on his Victrola. It's one of many memorable shots that made the 2:40 running time seem a lot shorter, as Kinski's opera-loving would-be rubber baron steams upriver, meets curious and sometimes hostile natives, and ultimately attempts to drag an entire steamship over a mountain. Although Kinski is known for his maniacal intensity, he's actually quite funny at times. I laughed out loud at the final shot.

While Les Blank's Burden of Dreams reveals a great deal, I liked one of Herzog's remarks the best. He implies that Fitzcarraldo was a reaction to special effects in popular cinema, and that he was trying to retrain viewers to trust their senses by shooting improbable things. Hence, dragging a 340-ton steamship up a 40-degree incline for half a mile, then down the other side to a different river, using (mostly) 1910 technology. Improbable, yet accomplished before your very eyes. Most people would've used a scale model, but not Herzog. We've grown accustomed to appreciating interesting camera angles, cuts and effects, and equating them with good cinema; Herzog gives you simple shots of unbelievable situations that simply must have existed in reality. Deadly.

[Also: As with Aguirre, I found myself laughing at the overlap in languages more than once. This time, Fitzcarraldo is supposed to be an Irishman living in countries where Spanish and Portuguese are spoken (along with native tongues). The actors were filmed speaking English, but the soundtrack was dubbed in German; then, they subtitled the whole thing in English. And the subtitles don't always match the original English track!]

The Burden Of Dreams DVD came with an unexpected treat. I'd heard about this 20-minute short before, and now I can't believe I've actually seen it. Duck fat, it seems, was the key. (And what do you know -- that's the manager of my local movie house, introducing Herzog onstage in Berkeley.)