As the pious but ruthlessly ambitious invaders pursue their fantasies of riches and power, they soon fall prey not only to the Amazonian forests, rivers and Indians but to their own ludicrous delusions of recreating European society in an indifferent, wholly alien landscape.

Most extreme in this madness is Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), whose megalomaniac scheming proceeds from the mutinous to the murderous.

At once a stirring but unsentimental tale of blind ambition and a remarkably rich and original variation on the adventure film, Werner Herzog’s masterpiece combines a flair for the epic with moments of incisive miniaturist observation.

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