You, dear reader, probably aren't as big a fan of Werner Herzog's as Opera Chic, because she's kind of obsessed by his quite unique blend of crank and genius and you probably aren't -- but if you liked Fitzcarraldo, or even if you didn't, but you like the films -- and the books -- that just had to be made, or had to written, if the literature and cinema of necessity are your thing, well, then Herzog's diary of the Fitzcarraldo production is a must-read for you, too.
A tasty morsel:
A vision had seized hold of me, like the demented
fury of a hound that has sunk its teeth into the leg of a deer carcass
and is shaking and tugging at the downed game so frantically that the
hunter gives up trying to calm him. It was the vision of a large
steamship scaling a hill under its own steam, working its way up a
steep slope in the jungle, while above this natural landscape, which
shatters the weak and the strong with equal ferocity, soars the voice
of Caruso, silencing all the pain and all the voices of the primeval
forest and drowning out all birdsong.
As it should be.
Continue reading "Werner Herzog and the Voice Of Caruso: The Fitzcarraldo Diary" »