IT’S ALL TRUE
You can now Download 12 selections from the many songs Orson Welles was considering using for the original soundtrack to The Story of Samba episode of It’s All True.
Thanks to João Perdigão / Canhotagem for providing this valuable link and compiling these vintage songs from the Brazilian artists Orson Welles was planning to use in his movie. Astonishingly enough, Welles was once again clearly ahead of his time. It’s All True would never see the light of day in either Brazil or the US, but several of the singers and songwriters he chose for the film all went on to have substantial careers in Brazil. Four of the most prominent are:
Grande Othelo, Linda Batista, Herivelto Martins (Trio de Ouro) and Pery Ribeiro. Interesting clips of their work after appearing in It’s All True can easily be found on YouTube. You can also read more about Brazilian singers and Praca Onze in Popular Song at Daniella Thompson’s excellent website on the subject.
For the song titles below I have attempted rough English translations, but obviously these may be incorrect, so anyone who can help with better translation of the song titles or lyrics in English, please let me know.
Citizen Samba / by Canhotagem
1) Linda Batista – Batuque no Morro (3:05)
(Drumming on the Hill)
2) Anjos do Inferno – Nós Os Carecas (2:27)
(Hell’s Angeles – We the Bald)
3) Pixinguinha – Carinhoso (2:57)
(Affectionately)
4) Trio de Ouro – Ave Maria do Morro (2:59)
(Gold Trio w/Herivelto Martins – Hail Mary of the Hill)
5) Dom Um Romão – Escravos de Jó (4:04) 2001
(The Slaves of Jó)
6) Época de Ouro – Um a Zero (2:12)
(Time of Gold – One for Zero)
7) Vadico – Se Alguém Disse (2:12) 1959
(If Somebody Said)
8 – Anjos do Inferno – Nega do Cabelo Duro (2:59)
(Hell’s Angeles – He Denies them Hard Hair)
9) Orlando Silva – Lero-Lero (3:21)
10) Trio de Ouro – Lamento Negro (2:52)
(Gold Trio – Black Lament)
11) Ataulfo Alves – Ai, Que Saudades da Amélia (2:43)
(The Lament for Amélia)
12) Trio de Ouro with Castro Babosa – Praça Onze (3:08)
(Plaza Eleven)
*****
EXCERPT FROM A TIMELINE ON THE MAKING OF IT’S ALL TRUE:
*****
THE OCIAA BOARD REJECTS COMPLETION FUNDS FOR “IT’S ALL TRUE”
May 25, 1943
In May Welles tried to get the new head of RKO, Peter Rathvon to allow him to finish IT’S ALL TRUE for a reduced budget of $100,000 but was once again rebuffed. 20th Century-Fox was now out of the running as a possible backer, but Samuel Goldwyn had showed a glimmer of interest in the project, which quickly faded after the OCIAA was now officially withdrawing it’s offer of $300,000 to complete the picture.
Thus, the OCIAA essentially orphaned a project they had lobbied Welles to undertake in the first place! Despite this setback Welles’ continues to write several proposals for the film. In these excerpts from later treatments, Welles adopted the style of his later essay films, F FOR FAKE and AROUND THE WORLD WITH ORSON WELLES where he would inject himself into the story by becoming both host and commentator on the events we are being shown on-screen.
In this treatment, Welles would arrive in Mexico, where he would be told (and tell) the tale of Bonita the Bull. From there it would be on to Brazil for the Carnival in Rio, which would be followed by the story of the Jangadeiros, when they arrive at Rio’s Harbor.
ORSON WELLES TREATMENTS (excerpts)
September 2, 1943
This is a picture divided into several parts. It is not, however, an arbitrary selection of short subjects, nor is it vaudeville. This is a new sort of picture. It is neither a play, nor a novel in movie form–it is a magazine.
(I am) ready to leave elaborate historical pageants to other movie-makers. The way (I) look at it, people are interested in people, and I’m going to use the camera to show American people to each other. Since the focus of the main part of our picture is on simple people, the incidental characters in the linking sequence are, wherever possible, presented as cultivated and well-to-do. The purposes of this tactic are I am sure, self-evident.
For FOUR MEN ON A RAFT, Welles would have read passages from Jacare’s own diary:
JACARE: We are part of another land. We belong to a great nation – Brazil. There is a President in a capital city. He is just. If he knew of these things, he would never permit them. We will go to him and he will help us …since the producer’s relations with the President of Brazil were of the very warmest, no possible official objection need be expected.
Here are some of Welles’ different approaches to the CARNIVAL footage:
We watch the people pouring into the city, dressed in as many different costumes as there are individuals. We see them swarming on the trolleys, like flies on a piece of sugar; we stop to watch the magnificent parade of floats; we listen for a moment as a lovely sambista stops the show at a swanky Rio night club…
In one treatment, Welles would turn over his hosting chores to a young boy:
Pery, this tiny, captivating child has lost his mother somewhere in the milling crowds… Making his way through seas of dancing feet with unperturbed good cheer, Pery becomes our guide… takes us places and shows us sights a stranger might easily miss during this first night of the Carnival.
Then, in the hills above Rio, Welles would meet Grande Otelo, and introduces him to us:
His name is Otelo. Remember that name. It belongs to the performer himself and this isn’t the last time you’ll encounter it. This is only his first American picture, and he’s a big hit in it, for sure. Otelo likes to be compared to Mickey Rooney, but he’s closer to a young Chaplin.
…From here we will come upon (Otelo) often as a type among carnival celebrants, a personalization of many popular aspects of the institution. This we think has been managed in the completed film in terms of truly uproarious entertainment.
Welles explained his plan to cross-cut between singers Grande Otelo and Linda Batista performing the song Batuque no Morro (Drumming on the Hill), noting the contrast between Otelo on the street and Batista at the Orca Casino.
…The contrast is one not only of voices, but of directions: The Carnaval of traditions is a celebration of the streets alone. But recent years have seen a trend indoors to the Baile and the Casino. The contrast, as it’s illustrated by this song, isn’t extreme—but the raucous raggle-taggle jamboree of the streets and the more professional, if equally enthusiastic atmosphere of the nightclub, is interesting in juxtaposition.
For the grand finale, Welles stresses the reason he was sent to Rio in the first place:
…when it seems that everything has been shown, the star enters to top everything. In our case, the star is the Americas. Rio’s carnival becomes Pan-America’s carnival… the Americas, all Americas together, are joined in fact as well as in idea, today rather than in the future.
…we see Rio awakening in the dawn of the morning after.
Richard Wilson’s shooting log of June 7, 1942 describes this ending for the CARNIVAL episode:
…This scene showed the lost child who had been featured throughout, now alone and asleep against the lamppost, surrounded by mounds of confetti and the debris of revelry in empty streets stretching for blocks. Dawn is breaking. As distant figures of street sweepers appear with their brooms, a policeman tenderly picks up the sleeping boy, asks his name and where he lives. The boy’s answer is a sleepy murmur of his favorite Samba, featured throughout. Their walk away is inter-cut with Grande Otelo saying farewell to Plaza Eleven as that song, also featured, plays like an echo. The lamp above the street sign goes out. Silence.
From this fade out, we’d go back and see Welles on the roof of a building overlooking the Praca Onze, which would soon be demolished to make way for the more modern Avenida Vargas. With Welles is Dona Maria, a representative of President Vargas’ government.
WELLES: Rio is one of the only beautiful old towns where new things are even more beautiful than the old ones.
DONA MARIA: …the hills up there, for instance, where the poor people live, where the school of the samba comes from, you were up there photographing one of them Senor Orson, do you know we’ve got new housing projects for all those places – model homes. They’re going up right now.
*****
No doubt President Vargas liked Dona Maria’s report on the progress of the new housing projects that were supposedly replacing the slums in the hills above Rio, but Welles was clearly shooting footage that would have made Rio look more like the trash-filled Mexican border town that displeased another Senor Vargas in TOUCH OF EVIL. Welles recalled shooting in the slums in a later interview:
ORSON WELLES: I remember the night we tried to photograph one of the tenement districts in the favelas, in the hills above Rio when thugs surrounded us and after a siege of beer bottles, empties of course, stones, bricks, and I hate to think what else, we retreated to a more photogenic district clutching our Technicolor cameras as we went…
Welles would have ended the film, just as the original Time magazine story did, by observing a Beechcraft airplane flying the four Jangadeiros over Rio harbor to their home in the north:
TIME – December 8, 1941: …Swept away by the spirit of the occasion the directors of Navegacio Acrea Brasileira offered the fishermen a Beechcraft to fly them home. Air time from Rio to Fortaleza: Nine hours.
ORSON WELLES: The flight back really happened. This picture is all true. Bonito was pardoned; carnival was just as you’ve seen it; the four men from the North really sailed all those long miles to Rio in five logs of wood with only the stars to guide them, so they could talk to the President of their country. Naturally our cameras weren’t always on the spot. Some of the action we had to reconstruct. Here, for instance — before we’d finished with our work, Jacare, the leader of the jangadeiros, had died in the sea. But this is still the end our picture, because this is the best place we know to stop. Also, it’s true. Jacare did go back to Ceara, and, of course, he’s still there — alive in the love of his fellows; still with us, like the Dragon of the Sea who told the slave traders he’d carry no more slaves. For Jacare lives now in American history. This picture is his; a humble, solid declaration. To Jacare, then! To his sixty days on the open sea, and the eight hours it took a plane to fly him back through the air, over fields and mountains and jungles to his family on Ipacema Beach; to the hours less it’s going to take to fly there tomorrow; to all brave flights and voyages; to his dream of the future.
******
FARWELL, PRACA ONZE
They’re going to raze Praca Onze
They’ll be no more samba schools
The tamborin is weeping
The entire hill is weeping…
Favela, Salgueiro
Favela, Salgueiro
Put away your tambourines,
Because the samba schools won’t be parading today
God bye my Praca Onze
Good bye
Already we know that you will disappear
Yet we have our memories
You will be forever in our hearts
Some new day we’ll have a new square
And sing of your past
******
Vão acabar
Com a Praça Onze
Não vai haver mais
Escola de samba, não vai
Chora o tamborim
Chora o morro inteiro
Favela, Salgueiro,
Favela, Salgueiro,
Mangueira Estação Primeira
Guardai os vossos pandeiros, guardai
Porque a escola de samba não sai!
Adeus, minha Praça Onze, adeus
Já sabemos que vais desaparecer
Leva contigo a nossa recordação
Mas ficarás eternamente em nosso coração
E algum dia nova praça nós teremos
E o teu passado cantaremos
Favela, Salgueiro,
Favela, Salgueiro,
Mangueira Estação Primeira
Guardai os vossos pandeiros, guardai
Porque a escola de samba não sai!
Adeus, minha Praça Onze, adeus
******
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