Sun. Oct. 5

"Fitzcarraldo," relesed back in the pre-CGI era of 1982, was one of the most daring, audacious movies we've ever seen. If it weren't Werner Herzog, it wouldn't be audacious would it, but this one takes the cake. There was casting, re-casting. There was Klaus Kinski's volatile temperament and the rumor that Herzog was offered a fee to have him killed. But mostly, it was that Herzog attempted making an impossible movie about an impossible feat. The film was based upon the real life Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald, who in the 1890s, brought a steamship across an isthmus from one river into another. Why? He is so obsessed with Enrico Caruso that he wants to build an opera house for him in the Amazon Jungle. Go figure. Just a touch of madness involved there, and, as we, said, in the movie-making itself. In "Fitzcarraldo," Herzog has a 340-ton steam ship moved over a mountain ... without the benefit of special effects. It's hard labor and it looks like it. In addition, during the filming of the "rapids" sequence, scenes were shot on board the ship as it crashed through rapids and white water, and this injured three of the six people in the film crew. Herzog, after completing this unique and difficult film, won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. (There was a subsequent, also stunning, documentary "Burden of Dreams" made by Les Blank, about making of "Fitzcarraldo.") Herzog's movie is screened Sunday Oct. 5 at 11 a.m., part of the Coolidge Corner Theatre's "Divas in the Dark Opera Movie Series." It will be shown on the giant silver screen and some are preceded by live a mini-performance and/or introduction by professional opera educators. This is the kickoff of the third year the Coolidge has partnered with the Boston Lyric Opera for this six-event series. Tickets: $9.75.

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