There must have been a miniature river rapids set built along with the scale model of the steamship.
Unfortunately there is no credits for the miniature sequence.
UPDATE 27 June 2015
Berton Pierce, who made the wonderful documentary about the legendary modelmakers of blockbuster movies "A Sense of Scale", contacted me through the comments section. He has a couple of photographs he took at an exhibition in Germany that featured the miniature ship from Fitzcarraldo and here they are below. The first one is a behind the scenes photograph of the miniature shoot that was displayed alongside the model at the exhibition. Although it is a bit blurry it does show the scale of the model with people in the scene.
Berton's documentary can be purchased from Amazon and I thoroughly recommend it. He has produced a valuable record of a now dying art and even more than that, he has made an entertaining film that is chock full of my heroes talking about the subject I love...miniatures.
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Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" is a fascinating film. Chock full of interesting ideas, superb use of Amazonian native peoples, and a few very well done sequences - along with the amazing and mercurial Klaus Kinski and beautiful Claudia Cardinale. However it is also riddled with poor supporting actors, and poorly filmed sequences. Yet I find the film absolutely fascinating.
ReplyDeleteThe sequence with the model ship is well done, but obvious. And I'm amazed the Herzog has denied that he used any special effects. I highly recommend "Burden of Dreams" about the tortured making of Fitzcarraldo.