Rate this book

Conquest Of The Useless: Reflections From The Making Of Fitzcarraldo (2009)

by Werner Herzog(Favorite Author)

4.19 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0061575534 (ISBN13: 9780061575532)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Ecco

review 1: Considering that the filming of Fitzcarraldo was a notorious boondoggle, which somehow resulted in a masterpiece of cinema, the average film fan might expect a day by day account of the filming. After all, there are some well known clips on YouTube that show verbal and physical altercations between Herzog and Kinski. However, this is Werner Herzog were talking about here, and you never know what he's going to focus on. So there's a lot of info on the local parrots, natives, and food, but not a great deal on Kinski, or the film. The actual making of the film is almost a sideshow in the book, a distraction from the hypnotic nature of the jungle. (Hooray, I managed to get Herzog's favorite word into my review! Hypnotic!) There's some interesting stuff on the discarded footage... more he shot with Jason Robards and Mick Jagger, but that's not the main story here. Herzog does warn the reader up front not to expect too much on the actual filming though, so this isn't much of a surprise. But really , I have to admit that I thought there would be a little more on the process of filming and the craziness that was the friendship between Herzog and Kinski. Oh well, my mistake I guess. Still it is worthwhile, if just for the Herzog fan.
review 2: It took me months and months to read this, and yet I never wanted to abandon it. It always called. Janet Maslin is quoted on the cover as calling it "hypnotic," and that's right - although I didn't read it nonstop, it kept me in its trance. In describing his life whilst pursuing a seemingly Sisyphean effort, in an utterly foreign and irrational and incomprehensible wild jungle that is at the same time somewhat habitable and executable (but only through effort simultaneously ruthless, persistent, and uncontrollable), Herzog describes not only the process of making a movie, but the tedious, unavoidable process of life.That may sound utterly pretentious, but I don't mean it to be. I mean it to be factual. less

Download links for: Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Advertising