It's All True (1942 film)
Encyclopedia
It's All True was the title of an unfinished
Orson Welles
feature film
of three stories about Latin America
. "My Friend Bonito" was shot in 1941 and both "The Story of Samba" and "Four Men on a Raft" in 1942. It was the subject of a 1993 documentary
written and directed by Richard Wilson, Bill Krohn and Myron Meisel.
following it from its roots to place in American culture in 1940s. The title was later changed to "The Story of Jazz". Welles contacted Duke Ellington
in the summer of 1941 asking his participation as a co-author, co-director, and musical supervisor. Welles put Ellington under contract at $1,000 a week for the project. Ellington collected $12,500 and wrote 28 bars of music for the project before it was shelved as a part of It's All True. According to Internet Movie Database
, this "history of jazz" section was to depict the story of Louis Armstrong
and is the only segment for which no filming was ever begun.
, was to tell the tale of a courtship of his Italian parents who met in San Francisco. The piece was presented as being based on the lives of Fante's parents, but in actuality was not. A script was written, but Fante devoted his attention afterward to working on the "My Friend Bonito" section.
by Joseph Conrad
. This section was quickly shelved.
. It was filmed in Mexico
in black-and-white under the direction of Norman Foster
beginning in September 1941 and supervised by Welles. Because of its subject and location, the short film was later integrated into It's All True.
in December 1941, Welles was asked by Nelson Rockefeller
(then, the coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
) to make the non-commercial
film without salary
to support the war
effort as part of the Good Neighbor Policy
. RKO Radio Pictures, of which Rockefeller was a major shareholder
and a member of its board of directors
, would foot the bill, with the Office of Inter-American Affairs
guaranteeing up to $300,000 against potential financial losses. After agreeing to do the project, he was sent on a goodwill mission to Brazil
in February 1942 to film Rio de Janeiro
's Carnaval
in both Technicolor
and black-and-white. This was the basis for "The Story of Samba
".
titled "Four Men on a Raft". The story was about four impoverished Brazilian fishermen
who set sail from Fortaleza
on the "São Pedro", a simple sailing
raft (jangada
), in September, 1941. After 61 days and 1,650 miles without any navigating instruments
, braving the wind, rain and fierce sun, and making many friendly stops along the way, they sailed into Rio de Janeiro harbor
as national heroes. The four men, led by Manoel Olimpio Meira who was called "Jacaré" (alligator) after the village where he was born, had arrived in what was then the Brazilian capital to file their grievance
s directly to President
Getúlio Vargas
against an economically exploitative system in which all fishermen were forced to divide half of their weekly catch amongst themselves (the other half went to the jangada owners) and that they were ineligible for social security
benefits. The result was a bill
that was signed into law
by President Vargas that entitled the jangadeiros to the same benefits awarded to all union
laborers - retirement
funds, pension
s for widow
s and children, housing, education and medical care.
The reenactment
of this epic voyage, which used the same title as the Time article and was filmed in black & white without sound, was to become the centerpiece of It's All True. It also cost the life of the leader of the four jangadeiros. During filming in May, 1942, Jacare fell from a jangada and was swallowed by a treacherous ocean current
. His decomposing head and both of his half-devoured arms were discovered a week later when a 440-pound
shark
caught off Barra da Tijuca
was opened.
took over control of the studio and began changing its direction. Rockefeller, an important backer of the film, left the RKO board of directors. Around the same time, the principal sponsor of Welles at RKO, studio president George Schaefer
, resigned. The changes throughout RKO caused a reevaulation of the project.
Welles' relations with his studio RKO were troubled during production. He had left California with editing on The Magnificent Ambersons
unfinished. Welles being in Brazil also led to communication problems and misunderstandings between himself and the studio. The escalating costs of the project and the production-related death of Jacare also worked against the film, and RKO terminated the project. Welles was allowed to finish shooting "Four Men on a Raft" by mid-July 1942 with a minimal budget and crew. When Welles returned to the United States, RKO ended its contract with him and It's All True was abandoned.
Welles sought to continue the project elsewhere and tried to persuade other movie studios to finance the completion of the project. Welles eventually managed to purchase some of the footage of the film, but ended up relinquishing ownership back to RKO based on his inability to pay the storage costs of the film. Some footage was eventually dumped into the Pacific Ocean
by RKO to create additional space in its studio storage facilities. The remaining footage was forgotten in the RKO vaults until it was discovered in 1985 in 300 cans, some labeled "Bonito," others "Brazil". The majority of the lost footage was from the portions of the film shot at Carnaval.
correspondent for Cahiers du cinéma
, made a 22-minute trailer
to raise money for the project. They were joined by film critic
Myron Meisel the next year and Catherine Benamou in 1988. Benamou, a Latin American and Caribbean specialist fluent in the dialect spoken by the jangadeiros, performed the field research and conducted interviews with the film's original participants in Mexico and Brazil. Wilson would continue to work despite having been diagnosed with cancer
which he only disclosed to family and close friends. It wasn't until after his death in 1991 when the project finally got the funding needed to complete the documentary from Canal Plus
.
Unfinished work
An unfinished work is creative work that has not been finished. Its creator may have chosen never to finish it or may have been prevented from doing so by circumstances outside of their control such as death. Such pieces are often the subject of speculation as to what the finished piece would have...
Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
of three stories about Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. "My Friend Bonito" was shot in 1941 and both "The Story of Samba" and "Four Men on a Raft" in 1942. It was the subject of a 1993 documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
written and directed by Richard Wilson, Bill Krohn and Myron Meisel.
Pan American
In 1941, Welles planned to release a film in four parts initially known as Pan American. The project quickly evolved into It's All True. The four original sections were "Jam Session". "Love Story", "Bonito the Bull", and "Captain's Chair". The overall theme of the film was to be showing the broad variety of American life."Jam Session"
Jam Session was conceived as a story of jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
following it from its roots to place in American culture in 1940s. The title was later changed to "The Story of Jazz". Welles contacted Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
in the summer of 1941 asking his participation as a co-author, co-director, and musical supervisor. Welles put Ellington under contract at $1,000 a week for the project. Ellington collected $12,500 and wrote 28 bars of music for the project before it was shelved as a part of It's All True. According to Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
, this "history of jazz" section was to depict the story of Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
and is the only segment for which no filming was ever begun.
"Love Story"
"Love Story", based on a story by John FanteJohn Fante
John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent. He is perhaps best known for his work, Ask the Dust, a semi-autobiograpical novel about life in and around Los Angeles, California, which was the third in a series of four novels, published between 1938...
, was to tell the tale of a courtship of his Italian parents who met in San Francisco. The piece was presented as being based on the lives of Fante's parents, but in actuality was not. A script was written, but Fante devoted his attention afterward to working on the "My Friend Bonito" section.
"Bonito the Bull"
"Bonito the Bull" was based on a bullfighting story written by Robert Flaherty and set in Mexico. It later evolved into "My Friend Bonito" and remained a part of the film."The Captain's Chair"
"The Captain's Chair" was based on a 1938 novel by Robert Flaherty. The central character is sent into the Arctic to extract minerals and discover the fate of a missing explorer (Captain Grant). The story is somewhat similar in plot and theme to Heart of DarknessHeart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
. This section was quickly shelved.
"My Friend Bonito"
"Bonito the Bull", retitled "My Friend Bonito" and produced by Flaherty, was about a Mexican boy's friendship with a bullBull
Bull usually refers to an uncastrated adult male bovine.Bull may also refer to:-Entertainment:* Bull , an original show on the TNT Network* "Bull" , an episode of television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation...
. It was filmed in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
in black-and-white under the direction of Norman Foster
Norman Foster (director)
Norman Foster was an American film director and actor.Born John Hoeffer in Richmond, Indiana, Foster originally became a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Indiana before going to New York in the hopes of getting a better newspaper job but there were no vacancies...
beginning in September 1941 and supervised by Welles. Because of its subject and location, the short film was later integrated into It's All True.
"The Story of Samba"
Two weeks after Pearl HarborAttack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
in December 1941, Welles was asked by Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
(then, the coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was a United States agency promoting inter-American cooperation during the 1940s, especially in commercial and economic areas...
) to make the non-commercial
Non-commercial
Non-commercial refers to an activity or entity that does not in some sense involve commerce, at least relative to similar activities that do have a commercial objective or emphasis...
film without salary
Salary
A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which may be specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis....
to support the war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
effort as part of the Good Neighbor Policy
Good Neighbor policy
The Good Neighbor policy was the foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt toward the countries of Latin America. Its main principle was that of non-intervention and non-interference in the domestic affairs of Latin America...
. RKO Radio Pictures, of which Rockefeller was a major shareholder
Shareholder
A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a public or private corporation. Shareholders own the stock, but not the corporation itself ....
and a member of its board of directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
, would foot the bill, with the Office of Inter-American Affairs
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was a United States agency promoting inter-American cooperation during the 1940s, especially in commercial and economic areas...
guaranteeing up to $300,000 against potential financial losses. After agreeing to do the project, he was sent on a goodwill mission to Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in February 1942 to film Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
's Carnaval
Rio Carnival
The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a world famous festival held before Lent every year and considered the biggest carnival in the world with two million people per day on the streets. The first festivals of Rio date back to 1723.-Samba schools:...
in both Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
and black-and-white. This was the basis for "The Story of Samba
Samba
Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...
".
"Four Men on a Raft"
The third part of the film was inspired by an article Welles read in the December 8, 1941 issue of TimeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
titled "Four Men on a Raft". The story was about four impoverished Brazilian fishermen
Fisherman
A fisherman or fisher is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishermen and fish farmers. The term can also be applied to recreational fishermen and may be used to describe both men...
who set sail from Fortaleza
Fortaleza
Fortaleza is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. With a population close to 2.5 million , Fortaleza is the 5th largest city in Brazil. It has an area of and one of the highest demographic densities in the country...
on the "São Pedro", a simple sailing
Sailing
Sailing is the propulsion of a vehicle and the control of its movement with large foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to move the boat relative to its surrounding medium and...
raft (jangada
Jangada
A Jangada is a traditional fishing boat made of wood used in the northern region of Brazil. Some claim the historical legacy of the jangada dates back to the ancient Greeks and that it was Ulysses' vessel in The Odyssey....
), in September, 1941. After 61 days and 1,650 miles without any navigating instruments
Navigation
Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...
, braving the wind, rain and fierce sun, and making many friendly stops along the way, they sailed into Rio de Janeiro harbor
Harbor
A harbor or harbour , or haven, is a place where ships, boats, and barges can seek shelter from stormy weather, or else are stored for future use. Harbors can be natural or artificial...
as national heroes. The four men, led by Manoel Olimpio Meira who was called "Jacaré" (alligator) after the village where he was born, had arrived in what was then the Brazilian capital to file their grievance
Grievance
A grievance is a wrong or hardship suffered, which is the grounds of a complaint.-History and politics:A grievance may arise from injustice or tyranny, and be cause for rebellion or revolution....
s directly to President
President of Brazil
The president of Brazil is both the head of state and head of government of the Federative Republic of Brazil. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces...
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
against an economically exploitative system in which all fishermen were forced to divide half of their weekly catch amongst themselves (the other half went to the jangada owners) and that they were ineligible for social security
Social security
Social security is primarily a social insurance program providing social protection or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others. Social security may refer to:...
benefits. The result was a bill
Bill (proposed law)
A bill is a proposed law under consideration by a legislature. A bill does not become law until it is passed by the legislature and, in most cases, approved by the executive. Once a bill has been enacted into law, it is called an act or a statute....
that was signed into law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
by President Vargas that entitled the jangadeiros to the same benefits awarded to all union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
laborers - retirement
Retirement
Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions don't allow the person to...
funds, pension
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
s for widow
Widow
A widow is a woman whose spouse has died, while a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or occasionally viduity. The adjective form is widowed...
s and children, housing, education and medical care.
The reenactment
Historical reenactment
Historical reenactment is an educational activity in which participants attempt torecreate some aspects of a historical event or period. This may be as narrow as a specific moment from a battle, such as the reenactment of Pickett's Charge at the Great Reunion of 1913, or as broad as an entire...
of this epic voyage, which used the same title as the Time article and was filmed in black & white without sound, was to become the centerpiece of It's All True. It also cost the life of the leader of the four jangadeiros. During filming in May, 1942, Jacare fell from a jangada and was swallowed by a treacherous ocean current
Ocean current
An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of ocean water generated by the forces acting upon this mean flow, such as breaking waves, wind, Coriolis effect, cabbeling, temperature and salinity differences and tides caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun...
. His decomposing head and both of his half-devoured arms were discovered a week later when a 440-pound
Pound (mass)
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...
shark
Shark
Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....
caught off Barra da Tijuca
Barra da Tijuca
Barra da Tijuca is a famous neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, located southwest of the city on the Atlantic Ocean. Barra, as it is popularly known, will have most of the venues of the 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be the first edition held in South America. Barra is well-known for its...
was opened.
The demise of the project
Major changes occurred at RKO in 1942. Floyd OdlumFloyd Odlum
Floyd Bostwick Odlum was a wealthy lawyer and industrialist. He has been described as "possibly the only man in the United States who made a great fortune out of the Depression"...
took over control of the studio and began changing its direction. Rockefeller, an important backer of the film, left the RKO board of directors. Around the same time, the principal sponsor of Welles at RKO, studio president George Schaefer
George Schaefer (film producer)
George Schaefer was a movie producer and once the president of RKO in 1941 when Orson Welles made his classic film Citizen Kane. Schaefer, a top executive at United Artists, was hired as president of RKO in 1938...
, resigned. The changes throughout RKO caused a reevaulation of the project.
Welles' relations with his studio RKO were troubled during production. He had left California with editing on The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 American drama film written and directed by Orson Welles. His second feature film, it is based on the 1918 novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington and stars Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins...
unfinished. Welles being in Brazil also led to communication problems and misunderstandings between himself and the studio. The escalating costs of the project and the production-related death of Jacare also worked against the film, and RKO terminated the project. Welles was allowed to finish shooting "Four Men on a Raft" by mid-July 1942 with a minimal budget and crew. When Welles returned to the United States, RKO ended its contract with him and It's All True was abandoned.
Welles sought to continue the project elsewhere and tried to persuade other movie studios to finance the completion of the project. Welles eventually managed to purchase some of the footage of the film, but ended up relinquishing ownership back to RKO based on his inability to pay the storage costs of the film. Some footage was eventually dumped into the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
by RKO to create additional space in its studio storage facilities. The remaining footage was forgotten in the RKO vaults until it was discovered in 1985 in 300 cans, some labeled "Bonito," others "Brazil". The majority of the lost footage was from the portions of the film shot at Carnaval.
It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (1993 documentary)
The driving force behind the documentary was Richard Wilson who collaborated with Welles on It's All True and most of his stage productions, radio shows, and other feature films. In 1986 Wilson, along with Bill Krohn, the Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
correspondent for Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
, made a 22-minute trailer
Trailer (film)
A trailer or preview is an advertisement or a commercial for a feature film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a feature film screening. That practice did not last long, because patrons tended to leave the...
to raise money for the project. They were joined by film critic
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
Myron Meisel the next year and Catherine Benamou in 1988. Benamou, a Latin American and Caribbean specialist fluent in the dialect spoken by the jangadeiros, performed the field research and conducted interviews with the film's original participants in Mexico and Brazil. Wilson would continue to work despite having been diagnosed with cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
which he only disclosed to family and close friends. It wasn't until after his death in 1991 when the project finally got the funding needed to complete the documentary from Canal Plus
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...
.