Fitzcarraldo *****

Writer/Director: Werner Herzog

Year: 1982

Cinematographer: Thomas Mauch

A crazy man is obsessed with the opera, and determined to bring it with him aboard a river steamboat to an isolated river in Peru. First he must drag the ship over a mountain.

If you aren't convinced that real cinema is born without CGI, well you haven't seen Werner Herzog, the mad director, insist that his actors literally drag a ship over a mountain.

The film is intended to document the madness of the character Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald... but maybe serves better as a document of the madness of Herzog. Still, you got to love it, after all, knowing the real struggle and danger actually exists adds enormously to the drama of the film in a documentarian sense. Put this film on the list with Cleopatra, Dances With Wolves, Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai, and Birth of a Nation for cinema that actually captured incredible real events on film, just for the sake of cinema.