The Traveltalk Orchestra plays Mexican-sounding standards while James Fitzpatrick shouts his usual facts and banal opinions. It's a typical entry in the long-running series, even if the tango they play is typically an Argentine musical form.
Well, that simply indicates the naivete of the era. Travelogues like the Fitzpatrick series brought to their audiences a glimpse of a world they might never see or think about otherwise. The earliest movies, less than a minute in length, often had the film makers travel far afield, like to London, to show a lion in a zoo's cage, or to a distant city's downtown, rendering them at once familiar and exotic. As movies lengthened and became edited, the travelogue grew with them, both as a standard 'selected short subject' and a feature, with works like MANHATTA (1921), GRASS, A NATION'S BATTLE FOR LIFE (1925), and BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927).
I do wish that Fitzpatrick's narration were more interesting, but Wilfred Cline's pictures are good.
Well, that simply indicates the naivete of the era. Travelogues like the Fitzpatrick series brought to their audiences a glimpse of a world they might never see or think about otherwise. The earliest movies, less than a minute in length, often had the film makers travel far afield, like to London, to show a lion in a zoo's cage, or to a distant city's downtown, rendering them at once familiar and exotic. As movies lengthened and became edited, the travelogue grew with them, both as a standard 'selected short subject' and a feature, with works like MANHATTA (1921), GRASS, A NATION'S BATTLE FOR LIFE (1925), and BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927).
I do wish that Fitzpatrick's narration were more interesting, but Wilfred Cline's pictures are good.