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Fitzcarraldo

In the early part of the 20th century, Iquitos, Peru, a small city on the Upper Amazon, is experiencing rapid growth due to a rubber boom. One incomer, an Irishman named Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (known locally as "Fitzcarraldo"), is a lover of opera and a great fan of the internationally renowned Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. He dreams of building an opera house in Iquitos, but, although he has an indomitable spirit, he has little capital. The Peruvian government has parceled up the areas in the Amazon basin known to contain rubber trees. 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.

A rubber baron shows Fitzcarraldo a map and explains that, while the only remaining unclaimed parcel in the area is on the Ucayali River, a major tributary of the Amazon, it is cut off from the Amazon (and access to Atlantic ports) by a lengthy section of rapids. Fitzcarraldo notices that the Pachitea River, another Amazon tributary, comes within several hundred meters of the Ucayali upstream of the parcel. He leases the inaccessible parcel from the government, and his paramour, Molly, a successful brothel owner, funds his purchase of an old steamship, which he christens the SS Molly Aida, from the rubber baron. After fixing up the boat, Fitzcarraldo recruits a crew and takes off up the Pachitea, which is largely unexplored because of the hostile Indians who live on its banks.

Fitzcarraldo intends to go to the closest point between the Pachitea and the Ucayali, pull his three-deck, 320 -ton steamship up the muddy 40° hillside, and portage it from one river to the next. He plans to use the ship to collect rubber harvested along the Ucayali and then transport the rubber over to the Pachitea and, on different ships, down to market at Atlantic ports.

Soon after they enter Indian territory, the majority of Fitzcarraldo's crew, who are unaware of his full plan, abandon the expedition, leaving only the captain, engineer, and cook. The natives are impressed by the steamship and, once they make contact, agree to help Fitzcarraldo without asking many questions. After months of work and great struggles, they successfully pull the ship over the mountain using a complex system of pulleys aided by the ship's anchor windlass. The crew falls asleep after a drunken celebration, and the chief of the natives severs the rope securing the ship to the shore. Fitzcarraldo awakens as the boat is entering the rapids, and is unable to stop it. The ship does not sustain any major damage, but Fitzcarraldo is forced to abandon his quest. Before returning to Iquitos, he learns that the natives helped him move the ship in the belief that sending it over the Ucayali rapids would appease the spirits dwelling there.

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 is told is in Manaus. Lacking an opera house, they construct their sets on the deck of the ship, and the entire city of Iquitos comes down to the riverbank to watch as Fitzcarraldo floats it by, managing to bring opera to the city after all.