Aguirre, the wrath of God

Synopsis

At the xvi ^th century , a Spanish expedition commissioned by Gonzalo Pizarro goes in search of Eldorado under the orders of Pedro de Ursúa . Lope de Aguirreone of his lieutenants, enlightened and megalomaniac, opposes his authority. His actions to sabotage the expedition multiply. When Ursúa ordered a search stop, Aguirre launched a mutiny against him and imposed the “coronation” of a noble of the group, Fernando de Guzmán, as “emperor of Eldorado”. He executed the supporters of the former leader, with the exception of Ursúa himself who is spared by Guzmán. The remaining men, under the orders of Aguirre and Guzmán, embark on a raft and descend the river in the hope of finding the city of gold.

Technical sheet

• Original title: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes
• French title: Aguirre, the wrath of God
• Director: Werner Herzog
• Scenario: Werner Herzog
• Photography: Thomas Mauch
• Editing: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
• Music: Popol Vuh
• Production: Werner Herzog , Hans Prescher , Daniel Camino , Lucki Stipetic
• Production Companies: Werner Herzog Filmproduktion , Hessischer Rundfunk (HR)
• Budget: $ 370,000 ¹
• Country of origin: West Germany
• Original language: German
• Format: Color – 1.33: 1 – mono sound – 35 mm
• Duration: 93 minutes
• Release dates:
  •  Germany : December 29 , 1972
  •  France :
    • May 16 , 1973( Cannes Film Festival )
    • February 26 , 1975 (national release)
  •  United States : April 3 , 1977

Distribution

• Klaus Kinski (VF: Edmond Bernard ) : Don Lope de Aguirre
• Helena Rojo (VF: Béatrice Delfe ) : Inez from Atienza
• Del Negro (VF: Jean Topart ) : Don Gaspar de Carvajal
• Ruy Guerra (VF: Daniel Gall ) : Don Pedro de Ursúa
• Peter Berling (VF: Henri Poirier ) : Don Fernando de Guzman
• Cecilia Rivera : Flores of Aguirre
• Daniel Ades (VF: Jacques Balutin ) : Perucho
• Armando Polanah : Armando
• Edward Roland (VF: Amidou ) : Okello
• Alejandro Repullès (VF: Jacques Berthier ) : Gonzallo Pizarro
• Daniel Farafan , Alejandro Chavez , Antonio Marquez , Julio Martinez , Alejandro Repullès : The Indians

Around the film

• The story of the conquistador Aguirre , inspired in particular by the chronicles of Gaspar de Carvajal , is authentic but the reality is somewhat different from the fiction of the film: far from being lost on the Amazon as the end of the film suggests, it reaches to the Atlantic with his troop and attack the Spanish possessions.
• At the beginning of the film, Aguirre gives his daughter a little lazy .
• The film is shot in six weeks in Cuzco, Peru ² .
• The scenes on the river were made on extremely dangerous rapids, the technicians are attached by ropes to the rafts and Werner Herzog and his operator are at the mercy of waves and whirlpools ² .
• Klaus Kinski was so hysterical on the set that he frightened the Indians every time he quarreled with Herzog ² .
• On the second day of filming Kinski asked Herzog to dismiss the team members for no reason. Having refused, the director causes the anger of the actor and the latter threatens to leave the set. Herzog threatens the actor to kill him with a gun if he leaves. Kinski, terrorized, yells in vain “Police! In the middle of the jungle (there is no village within 650 km ² ) and stays on the set.

Filming Locations

• Cuzco
• Río Huallaga
• Nanay River ³
• Río Urubamba

Awards and Distinctions

• César 1976 : Caesar nomination for best foreign film
• Léon Moussinac Prize of the French Union of Cinema Critics

Home Review

Although that Aguirre has received a relatively poor commercial reception to its output in Germany ⁴ , it is now considered a cult film ³ . The Rotten tomatoes site has 98% positive ratings and an average rating of 9.2 / 10, based on 47 reviews ⁵ . It is rated at 8.0 / 10 based on 37,482 reviews on IMDd ⁶ .

In France, the film is presented in May 1973, at the Cannes Film Festival, at the Directors’ Fortnight . He released confidentially on 26 February 1975 in Paris, at the UGC Marboeuf and the Studio des Ursulines ⁷ . The student public makes a triumph to the film and allows it to be taken back in other rooms and to lengthen its duration of exploitation ⁸ .

The film gets an average of 3.5 / 5 for 1,196 critical viewers and 5/5 for 5 press reviews on the Allociné ⁹ site .

Bibliography

• (in) Eric Ames , Aguirre, the Wrath of God , BFI Publishing, coll.  “BFI Film Classics”,2016, 96 p. ( ISBN  978-1-84457-753-8 , online presentation  [ archive ] ).
• (in) Eric Ames ( ed. ), Werner Herzog: Interviews , University of Mississippi Press,2015, 208 p. ( ISBN  978-1-4968-0251-4 , online presentation  [ archive ] ), [ “Re-staging History: Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, ” from an online interview  [ archive ] ] .
• (s) Carmen Becerra Suárez , ” La figura Mitica of Lope de Aguirre in the versions of W. Herzog y C. Saura ” , Hispanística XX , n ^o 15,1997, p.  331-340 ( ISSN  0765-5681 , read online  [ archive ] ).
• (in) Patricio Boyer , ” Fantasy and Imperial Discourse in Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God ” , Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies , Vol.  20, n ^o 3,2011, p.  261-279 ( DOI  10.1080 / 13569325.2011.617361 ).
• (en) Stephen Brockmann, “Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972): Film and the Sublime”, in A Critical History of German Film Series Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture, Rochester, NY , Camden House, 2010 p. 329-341 ( ISBN  978-1-57113-468-4 )
• (es) Nina Bruni , ” Crónica, novela and transposición filmica: Lope de Aguirre’s figurine in Abel Posse and Werner Herzog ” , Voz y Escritura. Revista de Estudios Literarios , n ^o 13,2003, p.  105-116 ( ISSN  1315-8392 , read online  [ archive ] ).
• Valérie Carré, Werner Herzog’s Anthropological Quest: Documentaries and Fictions , Strasbourg University Press, coll. “Faustus / Germanic Studies”, 2008, 346 p.
• (In) John E. Davidson , ” Have Others Put Plays upon the Stage: Aguirre, neocolonialism, and the New German Cinema ” , New German Critique , Duke University Press, n ^o 60 “Special Issue is German Film History”,autumn 1993, p.  101-130 ( DOI  10.2307 / 488668 , JSTOR  488668 ).
• (in) Ronald Fritze , ” Werner Herzog’s Adaptation of History in Aguirre, The Wrath of God ” , Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies , vol.  15, n ^o 4,December 1985, p.  74-86.
• (in) Matthew Gandy , ” Visions of Darkness: the Representation of Nature in the Films of Werner Herzog ” , Ecumene , vol.  3, n ^o 1,1996, p.  1-21 ( DOI  10.1177 / 147447409600300101 ).
• (es) Teresa J. Kirschner and Enrique Manchón , ” Lope de Aguirre como político político signo ” , Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos , vol.  18, n ^o 3 “Los dos nuevos mundos hoy: construcciones of realidad en España y Latinoamérica” ,spring 1994, p.  405-416 ( JSTOR  27763135 ).
• (in) Lutz P. Koepnick , ” Colonial Forestry Sylvan Politics in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo ” , New German Critique , Duke University Press, n ^o 60 “Special Issue is German Film History” ,autumn 1993, p.  133-159 ( DOI  10.2307 / 488669 , JSTOR  488669 ).
• Sébastien Layerle , ” The forgetting of our metamorphoses: popularization of history through the cinematographic image in Aguirre, the wrath of God (1972) and El Dorado (1987) “, 1895 , Paris, French Association for research on the film history (AFRHC), n ^o 37 “the images also have a history”2002, p.  45-67 ( read online  [ archive ] ).
• (in) Aarti Smith Madan , ” Werner Herzog as Double Translator: Thinking From Subalternity in Aguirre, the Wrath of God ” , Dissidences. Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism , vol.  5, n ^o 9, Section 3,2013 ( read online [ archive ] ).
• (es) María Dolores Pérez Murillo , ” Dos visiones of Lope de Aguirre a través del cine europeo: Werner Herzog and Carlos Saura ” , Trocadero , n ^o 23,2011, p.  261-275 ( read online  [ archive ] ).
• Brad Prager , ” At the limits of the frame: Werner Herzog’s not Alfred Hitchcock ” Décadrages , Lausanne, n ^o 25 “Werner Herzog”2013, p.  8-20 ( read online  [ archive ] ).
• (in) James Ramey , ” Representational Imperialism in Aguirre, The Wrath of God ” , The Latin Americanist , vol.  56, n ^o 2June 2012, p.  137-159 ( DOI  10.1111 / j.1557-203X.2012.01153.x ).
• (in) Holly Rogers , ” Fitzcarraldo’s Search for Aguirre: Music and Text in the Amazonian Films of Werner Herzog ” , Journal of the Royal Musical Association , vol.  129, n ^o 1,2004, p.  77-99 ( JSTOR  3557489 ).
• (es) Sabine Schlickers, “The Reinvención de América en el cine: 1492 The conquista del paraíso (Scott, 1992), Aguirre, the son of Dios (Herzog, 1972) and El Dorado (Saura, 1988)”, in Ana Luengo (ed.), The Reinvención de Latinoamérica: Interdisciplinary Cases of the Oral Backs , 2012, ( ISBN  978-3-631-63577-3 ) , p. 77-92.
• (In) Gundula M. Sharman , ” The jungle strikes back: European defeat at the hands of the South American landscape in the films of Werner Herzog ” , Journal of Transatlantic Studies , vol.  2, n ^o 1,2004, p.  96-109 ( DOI 10.1080 / 14794010408656809 ).
• (in) Victoria M. Stiles , ” Fact and Fiction: Nature’s Endgame in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God ” , Literature / Film Quarterly , vol.  17, n ^o 3,January 1989, p.  161-167.
• (In) Cynthia L. Stone , ” Aguirre Goes to the Movies: Twentieth-Century Visions of Colonial-Era Relaciones ” , Chasqui , vol.  34, n ^o 2 “Cinematic and Literary Representations of Spanish and Latin American Themes”,2005, p.  24-35 ( JSTOR  29742041 ).
• (in) William Verrone , ” Transgression and Transcendence in the Films of Werner Herzog ‘ , Film-Philosophy , vol.  15, n ^o 1,2011, p.  179-203 ( read online  [ archive ] ).
• (in) Gregory A. Waller , ” Aguirre, The Wrath of God : History, Theater, and the Camera ” , South Atlantic Review , South Atlantic Modern Language Association, vol.  46, n ^o 2May 1981, p.  55-69 ( DOI  10.2307 / 3199461 ,JSTOR  3199461 ).

Notes and references

See also

Related Articles

• Fitzcarraldo (1982), of the same Werner Herzog ; if the time retraced by the film is different, we find the same jungle environment, Kinski and the same difficult shooting conditions.
• El Dorado (1988), a film by Carlos Saura , is also dedicated to the epic of Lope de Aguirre.