Klaus Kinski is wild-eyed Irish dreamer Fitzcarraldo, obsessed with building an opera house in the upper Amazon and bringing his idol Caruso to sing there. He must first raise the money - no easy task, because he has already been dubbed "conquistador of the useless" by successful businessmen in town, after his other schemes failed.

But poverty-stricken kids there believe in his Irish magic, and so does Molly (Cardinale), owner of the town's prosperous brothel. She gives him money to buy land rights in an unclaimed area of the Ucayali River with 14 million rubber trees, as well as a boat. To reach his holdings, Fitzcarraldo has to pull his steamboat over a mountain.

Werner Herzog transports us to a far-away, exotic jungle that becomes for us and for the protagonist a twilight realm between dream and reality. Although all of Fitzcarraldo's crew abandon ship when they reach the area inhabited by Jivaro headhunters, the crazy entrepreneur and three of his associates win over the local Indians, and convince them to provide manpower for the monumental portaging effort. In the end, fate plays a trick on Fitzcarraldo, setting him on a different course from the one he planned. He proves willing to go with the flow. The scenery, Kinski's convincing performance, and the story's finale make Fitzcarraldo a fascinating work of art.