Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)

Description

Perhaps Herzog’s best known film, Aguirre, The Wrath of God is a cinematic triumph, landing on Time Magazine’s prestigious list of "All Time 100 Best Films" and labeled by legendary film critic Roger Ebert as "one of the great haunting visions of the cinema." Inspired by real events, but written entirely by Herzog as a fictitious story, Aguirre also marks a critical turning point in Herzog’s body of work, as it was the first collaboration between the director and his most frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski. The film follows the doomed expedition of a group of conquistadors who brave the rainforest of Peru in search of the fabled golden city of El Dorado, ultimately becoming a gripping tale of madness in the face of failure and certain death. Incredibly, Herzog wrote the entire screenplay for Aguirre in just two-and-a-half days after reading historical accounts of adventurers in the Amazon. After writing the script, Herzog knew exactly who we wanted to play the role of Aguirre: a man he met when he was just thirteen – Klaus Kinski, an actor whose ability to portray menacing characters on the verge of madness was overshadowed only by his legendary, real-life temper. Herzog had first met Kinski at a boarding house in Munich where his family was staying. Kinski had terrorized the other tenants, and the experience never left Herzog’s mind. He sent the script to Kinski, and after an hour-long, nearly unintelligible rant of praise from Kinski, Herzog had his leading man. Made for just $370,000, Aguirre required five-weeks of filming along the Amazon River in Peru to complete. The production met with incredible difficulties during filming. Cast and crew alike were forced to climb mountains, cut their way through dense jungles and brave violent rapids in authentic rafts constructed by natives. During a vicious storm, the film sets were drowned in several feet of water as the river flooded over its banks. Their rafts were destroyed and there was no way to continue filming the script as written. But in true Herzog fashion, he just incorporated the flooding into the story and pushed ahead. When the film opened in 1972, critics and audiences alike adored the picture. In the years since, it would garner a passionate international following. Aguirre is said to have influenced Francis Ford Coppola's opus Apocalypse Now, and Roger Ebert counts the final image of the movie, "among the most memorable I have ever seen."