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By PAUL BRENNER
Paramount Home Video has
duplicated its old laserdisc release of Richard
Wilson, Myron Meisel, and Bill Krohn 1993 hybrid
documentary cum reconstruction of Orson Welles's
legendary lost film, "It's All True."
On February 5, 1942, twelve hours after completing
a grueling shooting schedule at R.K.O. for both
"The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Journey Into
Fear," Orson Welles embarked upon a fateful trip
to Brazil. At the instigation of Nelson
Rockefeller and the United States government,
Welles was enlisted to concoct a documentary
tribute to Brazil, in order to promote Roosevelt's
Good Neighbor Policy. Questioned by a reporter at
the onset of his journey regarding the subject
matter of his forthcoming documentary, Welles
replied, "I've got no script, no actors, no
preconceived ideas. I'm going down there with a
camera, and I hope to record something that will
be of interest to the people of all the Americas."
Welles brashly swaggered aboard the aircraft,
obtusely unaware that, like George Amberson
Minafer in "The Magnificent Ambersons," he was
about to get his comeuppance.
Already a living legend at 26, R.K.O.'s resident
genius and Hollywood's enfant terrible sallied
forth to begin a doomed, never-to-be-completed
film, originating in the minds of the U.S. and
Brazilian governments as a happy-go-lucky, picture
postcard propaganda piece like "The Three
Caballeros," but, in the hands of Welles, retooled
into an idealized, agitprop exploration of
Brazilian poverty and racism. The film, "It's All
True," became for Welles an incendiary bomb that
poisoned his reputation and engulfed his career in
Hollywood, forcing him into the bare-bones
scrounging for film funding that hounded him until
his dying day, making him a martyred genius
sacrificed upon the altar of commerce.
Presumed to be lost forever (some accounts
reported that R.K.O. executives had the negative
of the film dumped in the ocean), "It's All true"
achieved mythic status in film history lore,
gaining a place in the pantheon of such
studio-ruined artistic masterpieces as "Greed,"
"Que Viva Mexico," and Welles's own "The
Magnificent Ambersons."
But back in 1985 footage from "It's All True" was
discovered in a film vault at Paramount. Not a
complete film by any means, but enough for
long-time Welles collaborator Richard Wilson, and
film critics Myron Meisel and Bill Krohn, to
fashion into this 1993 documentary from the extant
footage of this legendary project.
But legend be damned. The footage in "It's All
True" is impressive in an isolated way, but
Welles's conception still appears as ephemeral and
half-baked as before. Welles had planned for "It's
All True" to consist of three short films -- a
stark, simply shot folk tale called "My Friend
Bonita"; a free-form investigation into the
origins of the samba called "Carnaval"; and a
chronicle of a perilous 1,650 mile journey of four
poor fishermen on a raft to protest the lack of
concern of the Brazilian government over their
abject poverty called "Four Men and a Raft." Most
of the footage from all this is still missing. An
attempt is made to bring some order to the footage
of "My Friend Bonita" but the "Carnaval" footage
is almost non-existent, except for a collection of
luscious Technicolor footage of the Rio carnival
that serves mostly as a backdrop for the first
part of the film. The burden of proof is left with
"Four Men and a Raft" which, despite ragged
editing and continuity lapses, is the most
complete of the segments and which comprises the
second-half of the film.
Welles movingly captures the dispiriting poverty
and the nobility of the lives of the fishermen,
eschewing his baroque Hollywood studio style for a
more formalistic, encased lyricism, harkening back
to Eisenstein's "Que Viva Mexico" and forward to
his own post-Hollywood naturalism of "Othello" and
"Confidential Report" -- not to mention the jagged
rhythms of "Touch of Evil" and "The Trial."
But does the segment hold up on its own? Alas, no.
Pieced together by Wilson, the segment is still
too fragmentary to get any sense of what Welles
had in mind. And Wilson continually cuts to
smiling, waving peasants, sentimentalizing their
poverty to the point of mawkishness. Also, the
segment is minus the voiceovers of Welles (who was
to have narrated the film) and his wry, sardonic
commentary is sorely missed.
There is no denying the fascination of this
partial reconstruction for film scholars. But as
it stands, "It's All True" is a freak show curio,
neither documentary nor film. For viewers
uninterested in Orson Welles or film history,
"It's All True" will hold little fascination or
interest.
Paramount offers no special features to accompany
the film, and well it shouldn't. The film itself
is it's own special features section. |
