DVD Review: Fitzcarraldo
Published April 05, 2007
I first watched Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo back in the late 1980s, on PBS, and found it to be a great film. All these years later I still find it to be a great film, if not quite in a league with Herzog and Klaus Kinski’s other most famed filmic pairing, Aguirre: The Wrath Of God.
The earlier film, made a decade before, shares other elements with Fitzcarraldo, which was written and directed by Herzog. The most obvious is that both involve river journeys in the Amazon, and both films have scenes of troublemakers being left in the jungle to fend for themselves. In Aguirre it’s a horse, in Fitzcarraldo it’s four humans. A less obvious commonality is that both films were shot in English, then dubbed into German. Thus, when one chooses the English language option on the DVD one is watching the film as it was originally made. This is how I watched it, and how all foreign language or foreign made DVDs should be packaged. In a visual medium there is absolutely no excuse for foreign films to not have available English dubbed soundtracks, for the reading of words necessarily diminishes the visual impact of the film on first watching.
However, this film would still be great even were it only available with subtitles. Yet, if a viewer is expecting another vintage, over-the-top performance by Kinski, he will be disappointed, for Kinski’s titular character, whose real name is Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Fitzcarraldo is a local nickname based on a mispronunciation), is far more understated a role than in his other collaborations with Herzog. It’s a great performance, nonetheless, which proves a) that Kinski was one of the twentieth century’s greatest actors and b) how felicitous it was for Herzog that his original choice for the role, Jason Robards, dropped out due to illness. While I think Robards was a fine actor, he was not near the pure acting talent that Kinski was. Another fact gleaned from the DVD commentary is that Herzog had a sidekick role for Robards’ version of Fitzcarraldo, with rock star Mick Jagger in the lead role. A few scenes of this pairing appear in Herzog’s acclaimed documentary on Kinski called My Best Fiend, and they are absolutely terrible. That Jack Nicholson was also considering taking the lead role, but declined it, is another instance of fortuity’s role in great art.
As the film starts we find out that Fitz is a local opera-addicted eccentric who seeks to become a wealthy man again during Peru’s ‘Rubber Boom’ at the turn of the last century. He’d lost all his money in a swindle called the Trans-Andean Railroad, and now sponges off the town’s gorgeous madam, Molly (Claudia Cardinale), in the town of Iquitos. He also loves opera beyond good sense, and comes up with a scheme to build an opera house in Iquitos so that his idol, the great opera star Enrico Caruso, will come and sing there.
- DVD Review: Fitzcarraldo
- Published: April 05, 2007
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Foreign Language, Video: Drama, Video: Classics, Video: Art House
- Writer: Dan Schneider
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Comments on this articleComments
Perhaps it's because I grew up watching Godzilla films, so dubbing does not distract. I cannot fathom how a few misaligned lips can distract as much as words that can cover up to 30 or 40% of the screen.
I do think, however, the voice is the easiest thing for an actor to use in emoting- physical and facial acting is much more difficult. The great actors emote with their eyes, not their lips.
Criterion Collection, as example, has notoriously poor subtitles- white on black and white films. At least Anchor Bay uses colored subtitles.
I would ask, have you ever been emotionally moved by a cartoon character? If so, then I wd argue that lip synchronization, and emoting in voice tone is not as hard as you claim.
Thanx for the reply.
It is as you point out for a large part what people grow up with, Germany dubs, and so do a lot of other countries. I happened to grow up with subtitles so it is easier for me.
It may also be more easy for me for instance to watch films in their original language since English and German (not my native tongues) come fairly easy to me. I don't expect Americans or Brazillians to understand Dutch for instance.
English is also a very predominant language as much as a 'global' language but very much so in relation to films. But try to ignore this for a moment and imagine an actor like Anthony Hopkins, or Jeremy Irons with a wildly different voice. These are actors who can downplay their facial porfermance to a minimum and compliment it with an almost hypnotic timbre, and how their 'englishness' makes so much difference. Forget even about that, what about Trainspotting in German? Do you really think the impact of hearing this Scottish slang translates well into some local German or French or Spanish whatever, accent? New York street slang substituted for downtown Helsinki 'jive'?
I know most people couldn't care less and may not even recognize these things but on a subconsious level they probably do.
Yes, emoting in voice tone is something voiceactors are off course very good at, it's what they are trained and chosen for. But how well do they stand up to the originals? One could argue that some performances can only be improved because of the dubbing but I wouldn't even bother with bad acted stuff to begin with.
I personally pick up on accents pretty quick and it influences my experience of the movie and understanding of the characters. I had multiple opportunities whereby I was presented by dubbed versions of films, being it from original English to local speech, or the other way round. I feel something definitally gets lost in the translation, of which a part is the literal tranlation itself, but in the feeling for the actor as well.
I did 'force' some people to stop watching dubs because I refuse to watch dubbed films (I don't mean normal ADR) and some of them even turned over and now do feel the dubbed versions sounds 'unnatural'. Others are just lazy and can't be bothered, their choice off course.
Apart from that, don't you think it's a bit bland to watch forreign films in your own language, isn't it part of the charm that you hear another language, the one that is relevant to the place it plays in? It might make communication easier, but wouldn't it be so very bland if the world sounded the same everywhere?
'One Night on Earth' by Jim Jarmush may be a good way to illustrate my point. The couleur locale oozes out of those stories and very much because of the many languages spoken. More recently Babel comes to mind.
Again, just my feeling on this subject.
Cheers!
Well, if one is used to something they are used yo it.
But, I think if you got 100 people, who never saw a foreign language film, and played dubbed and subtitled versions, 80%+ wd prefer the dub, Again, while narrative and story are essential for great films, they work subconsciously, while the image dominates. Esp. w great directors, things go on in the background or corners that enrich a film immensely. I grant a bit may be lost by dubbing, but far more is lost by subtitling. It's similar t translating poetry- does one do a literal word-by-word transliteration, or get the gist? If the latter, your gist may be different from another's, so while the translated poem flows better, is it the same essential gist?
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You mention that you prefer a dubbed version to a subtitled one. I see your point that reading titles could be distracting. I would argue that the distraction of seeing a persons lips move to different sounds would be equally distracting as it inherently looks awkward. Not to mention the deminishing of the performance, I've heard virtually no dub that really did justice to the performance of the original actor. Instead, I found it usually completely wrecked it. You just can not substitute the performance of an actor in his part, moment and environment, by the dub of some voice-actor in a studio who was never there, didn't get to interact with the other actors, surroundings and overall, director. Also the cadens and choise of words that sound like the emotion they portrait is different from language to language. I would personally value the voiceperformance of an actor to be in some cases even more than half of the total performance. Just my thought. What's yours?
I'm not really arguing about this film as it was shot and dubbed in both German and English and looks a bit awkward in both cases. One can't however appreciate Kinski to the fullest in any other language than German (even if it's him doing the dubbing);)!
Best regards,