Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald--Fitzcarraldo to his fellow rubber barons in turn-of-the-century Peru--is possessed with the idea of opening up his own opera house in Iquitos and importing Enrico Caruso to head his company of singers. Why not? So he buys an inaccessible rubber plantation, hires hundreds of head-hunting Indians, and hauls a 320-ton steamship over a mountain to get from one river tributary to another. "It's a stunning spectacle, an adventure-comedy not quite like any other, and the most benign movie ever made about 19th-century capitalism run amok." (NY Times)
1982, color, 2 hours 37 minutes, Germany