It's All True (1993)*** (out of 4) Fascinating documentary about the trouble Orson Welles fell into with RKO when he finished up THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and went to Brazil to film what was basically a South American trilogy. Welles was involved in three films: MY FRIEND BONITO, filmed in Mexico about a boy and his donkey; CARNAVAL, which footage shown here is in glorious Technicolor; and FOUR MEN ON A RAFT, which contains the majority of the footage here. IT'S ALL TRUE isn't going to be a movie for everyone and I'd imagine that most people would find it deadly dull and lifeless. Film buffs, however, should get a real kick out of it but the sad thing is that you could remake this movie a dozens times because it happened so often to Welles. The documentary starts off at the end of CITIZEN KANE when Welles was already considered controversial. It then moves onto the disastrous screening of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS where Welles thought he'd have a chance to re-edit the movie but instead the studio did it behind his back. We then get into the filming of the three films and learn of the various issues that happened including the lack of money, a curse from a voodoo man and eventually the studio taking the films away. In a bit of great luck, the footage to the three movies were discovered in 1985 and seeing the footage is interesting. CARNAVAL really stuck out to me because of the amazing colors, which just leap off the screen in Technicolor. The footage looks remarkably well and just look at the wonderful details in the costumes that the people are wearing. The stuff on FOUR MEN ON A RAFT has the most footage and also gets quite a bit of a backstory about the real event, the real tragedy and of course how Welles got involved and what he did to try and save the film. Film buffs and fans of Welles will certainly want to check this out. We get some nice interviews with people who worked on the film as well as relatives to those actual people that the film is based on.

It is by sheer luck sometimes that an artist's work survives. For centuries the works of the Greek dramatist Menander did not exist except for occasional quotes (including "whom the Gods love die young"). But since 1905 one complete play, one nearly complete play, and five huge fragments exist to be studied by drama students. They were found on various papyri that managed to survive in the dry climate of Egypt.With Orson Welles there are several films which are seriously missing scenes he shot that were cut. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS is the best known (cut and a new ending attached), but there is also THE STRANGER, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, MACBETH, and IT'S ALL TRUE to ponder. Welles had a way of making enemies due to his ego, but he was a brilliant film maker, and to see the damage these pygmies did to his work makes one angry. The fate of Konrad Meinike in THE STRANGER was to be the culmination of half an hour of activity in the film showing his escape from prison in Europe and his traveling to Latin America to locate the man he worked with - who would kill him. The famous crazy house sequence in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI is only a small segment now of what Welles shot (that segment is still great, but the missing footage probably was superb). Restoration on CONFIDENTIAL REPORT makes it coherent now, and MACBETH now has it's original length and soundtrack. TOUCH OF EVIL too has been somewhat repaired based on the memos Welles left of his intentions for the film.IT'S ALL TRUE, unlike the other films, was never completed enough in any form to be shown to the public. Welles went to Latin America, having finished shooting AMBERSONS, and was to do a "good neighbor policy" documentary for the Roosevelt administration under the auspices of Nelson Rockefeller. He had to also cut AMBERSONS, and his finished cut version was butchered by his enemies at RKO who had it's end re-shot. Political differences with the Brazilian strongman, Getulio Vargas, helped doom IT'S ALL TRUE, and caused the footage to be left on a shelf to rot rather than to be released.Over the years film historians noted it's existence, until finally in 1990 or so some began preserving and editing the best surviving footage. Unfortunately much of the sections on "MY FRIEND BONITO" and of "The STORY OF SAMBA" was lost, but enough lasts to show Welles' eye for film was working brilliantly. Fortunately the last section, "FOUR MEN ON A RAFT" survived, and could be put into coherent form. It told the story of four poor fishermen from the north - east corner of the country with grievances, who sailed a raft (with one or two stops) all the way to Rio, in order to see President Vargas. They managed to do it. But Vargas did not really help these fisherman (one of whom was killed apparently when Welles was filming the sequence). The sequence is not only moving, but also extremely beautiful to look at. One gets the impression that Welles' Latin American documentary would have been a gorgeous one.The version of IT'S ALL TRUE is the closest we will ever have to what Welles meant to show. I recommend watching it, with the commentary sequences showing Welles at work, and his explaining the way things went wrong. Enjoy what is left. It is worth seeing.

This is certainly not the movie Welles would have made. Welles would have made something far more interesting; even his worst films have a certain fascinating quality but this is really pretty dull. They've taken his footage, strung it together in order attached a bland score that adds nothing to it and put a dull little documentary in front so you would understand what you were seeing. It's an interesting curio for film buffs, and there are some striking images, but don't kid yourself; this isn't even remotely what Welles would have created. This is a workmanlike construct using some tools created by Welles, that's all. This is not like rediscovering a Bach concerto, it's more like a piece of music written based on a description of a Bach concerto by someone who doesn't quite remember how it goes.

Welles was apparently asked by Nelson Rockefeller to make a film cementing USA-Latin American relations during World War II, to forestall possible Nazi influence in the South. It's easy to feel resentful about this film, especially if you've read David Thomson's majesterial 'Rosebud: The Story Of Orson Welles'. He relates how Welles' persistant and eventually pointless devotion to this project led directly , through his own lapses, to the destruction of his greatest film, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.On the other hand, this is a major act of cinematic restititution, the equivalent of finding a lost Shakespeare play, or Bach cantata. Any scrap of abandoned Wellesiana is vital, and needs to be seen, for its inherent brilliance of style and ideas, whatever its superficial shortcomings; and to give a more coherent grasp of an awesome, mercurial career.The only problem is that the project, even if it had been completed, seems to have been wrongheaded, especially in consideration of Welles' particular talents. I had seen snippets of the samba sequence on TNT a few years ago, and they seemed redolent of a certain, loveable Welles - anecdotal, entertaining, sympathetic, larger-than-life, perceptive. A large element of the Welles aesthetic is play. The flaw of this film is that Welles abandons this because he wants to be seen in serious, selfless, unpatronising mode. This attitude today, however, can seem as simplistic, and even dangerous, as the worst pieties of Italian neo-realism.The restoration is structured as a documentary, as we get a brief background to the story: both Welles' involvement, and the plight of the Brazilian people he portrayed. The film itself was intended to be a triptych. We only get snippets of the first two parts - 'Benito' has some remarkable camera angles later used more meaningfully in OTHELLO and THE IMMORTAL STORY; a loving capturing of Mexico, which, like DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE, manages to aestheticise poverty; and a lovely shot of flying sheep. The second story was supposed to be about the roots of samba - we get some amazing, evocative colour footage of a Rio carnival, all the more moving and alive today when we think that this was going on in the middle of a black and white war.The centrepiece of IT'S ALL TRUE is a supposedly complete 'Four Men On A Raft' (with an unintentionally comic reminder of 'Three Men On A Boat'): a reconstruction of four peasant fishermen's 1650-mile sea voyage to the Brazilian fascist leader, the appropriately named Vargas, to protest about their atrocious living and working conditions.This is a silent work of the most ravishing beauty, with some of the most extraordinary images ever filmed, utilising, yet far superior to, Eisensteinian composition: the fishermen at work; life in the community; the sea voyage; visits to beautiful Mexican churches; the arrival of the men at a Rio beach. There is a jaw-dropping funeral sequence, a dwarfed procession under a weltering sky, which is among the best things in Welles (i.e. cinema).It's just that I, personally, can't stand this kind of filmmaking. It's main influence is the unbearable Robert Flaherty, and besides a trite, TABU-style love story, there is an unthinking romanticising of the peasantry, ignoring them as actual human beings who might prefer not to be seen as so saintly, that verges on the offensive; a benevolent version of the white man's burden. Of course, Welles, politically, was a very decent, liberal, passionate man, but none of the methods used to politically expose, as well as humanise, Charles Foster Kane, are used here: that would be to trivialise the project.It's this air of repressive earnestness that kills IT'S ALL TRUE for me. Welles could be a brilliant documentary maker - see F FOR FAKE - but this film, for all its peerless beauty, seems little more than propaganda, with Welles' atypical lack of ego making it feel unWellesian and underdone. This is doubly apparent during the closing credits, over which is played a wonderful, amusing encounter between Welles and Carmen Miranda, who explains to him various aspects of the samba. The heroic restorers deserve laurels, medals and a place at the celestial restoration of AMBERSONS, but if you want to see a great 'Good Neighbour' film, watch the magical THE THREE CABALLEROS.