American Cinematographer - August 1983 - 89

several times. Sometimes the water
couldn't navi¬

very dangerous to be around. Nor
could we shoot any original sound

secondary reflection to light inte¬
Frequently we used only fire
light or light from large oil lamps.
I had tried to anticipate certain
technical problems. Certainly I had
expected it to be terribly hot, and that

gate, and therefore had to postpone
shooting. Sometimes we had to

during these shots because the noise
of the tractor was deafening. We

change composition and lenses when
navigating in extremely narrow water

were

there would be all sorts of disease

it

and

ship across the mountain. The total

FITZCARRALDO

Continued

from

page

level

65

of

riors.

mosquitos, and that we would
only be able to sleep and work under
nets. I also expected a lot of rain. In
fact, both water and rain were to play
a major role in the film. I was also
afraid that we wouldn't have enough
light and power to make even simple
exposures. None of these fears
proved justified. Our elevation was
about 1,200 feet, which placed us
above most of the heavy ground wa¬
ters, and consequently most bugs,
which congregate in the lower
regions.
What I hadn't anticipated was the
constant rising and falling of the river.
It rose and fell so rapidly in such short
periods of time, that it became difficult
to film on it.

Several times

we

hit

barely submerged sandbanks, which
hadn't been there shortly before, and
everything would topple over. We
nearly lost our cameras overboard

was

so

low

we

passages.
Our

biggest problem, of course, as
for Fitzcarraldo, was to get the

was

distance between the two rivers

was

1.5 to 2 kilometers, with an upward
elevation of around 150 feet. The ship

itself

weighed approximately 200

tons, was over 100 feet long, and
clearly was not going to be moved by
Indians and winches, even though
that's what the movie

was

all about.

Theoretically, of course, moving the
ship should only have been a question
of "How many Indians?'' In reality,
however, it took a large Caterpillar
tractor and heavy steel cables to inch
this ship literally centimeter by cen¬
timeter up the hill. The whole thing
had to be staged and photographed
as if the Indians and winches they
used were moving the ship. Actually, it
all looked pretty good. The only diffi¬
culty was in staging it.
The Indians could not
contact with the main

come

cable,

as

it

into
was

forced to record

our

live sound

separately with the cast, as it would
have been impossible to later dupli¬
cate the noise and sounds that 500

Indians make in

jungle pulling a 200
ship up a mountain.
So, the biggest problem faced was
not in the simple making of a film, but
pulling the ship up a mountain. This
also consumed the largest part of our
total budget. Actually, camera had the
smallest budget line in the whole pro¬
duction: me, two assistant camera¬
a

ton

men, two
was

gaffers and no grips. Grip
by the Mexican special

handled

effects team, and a few Indians.
Our problems in the jungle, at least
as

far

as

the

cameras

were

con¬

cerned, were more human than tech¬
nical in nature. Our main camera was
an

Arri 35BL, a

that

relatively early one
Herzog owns himself. We had a

and a
beat-up zoom lens that I later
found to be only really good from f5.6
set of Zeiss normal lenses,

rather

Herzog's old 35BL-2 proved not to
quietest camera due to its age,
but it did prove to be virtually inde-

on.

be the

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87
American Cinematographer - August 1983

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