Fitzcarraldo (/fɪtskə'raldo/) is a 1982 West German epic adventure-drama film written, produced, and directed by Werner Herzog, and starring Klaus Kinski as would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who is determined to transport a steamship over the Andes mountains to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon basin.

One immigrant, an Irishman named Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (known by the locals as "Fitzcarraldo"), is a lover of opera and a great fan of the internationally-renowned Italian tenor Enrico Caruso.

However, the best parcels having already been leased to private companies for exploitation, Fitzcarraldo has been trying and failing to make the money to bring opera to Iquitos by various other means, including an ambitious attempt to construct a Trans-Andean Railway.

After fixing up the boat, Fitzcarraldo recruits a crew and takes off up the Pachitea, which is largely unexplored because of the hostile indigenous people who live on its banks.

Fitzcarraldo intends to go to the closest point between the Ucayali and the Pachitea, pull his three-deck, 320-ton steamship up the muddy 40° hillside, and portage it from one river to the next.

Soon after they enter indigenous territory, the majority of Fitzcarraldo's crew, who are unaware of his full plan, abandon the expedition, leaving only the captain, engineer, and cook.

Despondent, Fitzcarraldo sells the steamship back to the rubber baron, but there is time before the title changes hands for him to send for a European opera company that he hears is in Manaus.

[citation needed] Jason Robards was originally cast in the title role, but he became ill with dysentery after completing forty percent of the film and was subsequently forbidden by his doctors to return to Peru to finish.

Due to the delay in production, Mario Adorf was no longer available to play the role of the ship's captain, which was recast, and Mick Jagger had to leave to tour with the Rolling Stones, so Herzog wrote the character of Fitzcarraldo's assistant Wilbur out of the script.

A scene from Herzog's documentary about the actor, My Best Fiend (1999), shows Kinski raging at production manager Walter Saxer over such matters as the quality of the food.

For example, in a scene in which the ship's crew is eating dinner while surrounded by the natives, the clamor the chief incites over Fitzcarraldo was inspired by actual hatred of Kinski.

[citation needed] The production was affected by numerous injuries and the deaths of several indigenous extras who were hired to work on the film as laborers.

Aguaruna men burned down the film set in December 1979, reportedly careful to avoid casualties,[11] and it took Herzog many months to find another suitable location.

The film uses excerpts from Verdi's Ernani, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci ("Ridi, Pagliaccio"), Puccini's La bohème, Bellini's I puritani, and Strauss' Death and Transfiguration.

[22] In her 1983 parody "From the Diary of Werner Herzog" in The Boston Phoenix, Cathleen Schine describes the history of a fictitious film, Fritz: Commuter, as "a nightmarish tale of a German businessman obsessed with bringing professional hockey to Westport, Connecticut".

The film is referred to in the Simpsons episode "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister" (2005), in which the students are forced to pull their bus up a mountain.