User Reviews

As the sun rises at dawn, TravelTalks watches Rio de Janeiro and the statue of Cristo Redentor on Mount Corcovado. The "River of January" was first founded some 400 years ago. The crew travels around the city with its daily street life. James A. FitzPatrick seems to be concentrating on the respected mixing of local races. In many episodes, he can be tone-deaf on race, but this time around, he's almost progressively modern. It has the beaches of Copacabana and Sugarloaf mountain. They travel 40 miles to the resort Quitandinha which President Truman visited. Next, it's modern Sao Paolo. Finally, it's the Iguazu Falls on the border between Brazil and Argentina.

It's the depths of WWII. At least, this TravelTalks gets out of the country and it's an exotic location. It has some interesting colors and FitzPatrick is not embarrassing in his commentary. Color me surprised. It's an exotic location that I want to visit. The picture is fine with its colors although I would like for better technical work. This is as good as can be expected.

Beautiful Brazil (1952)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

TravelTalks entry takes us to Brazil where narrator James A. FitzPatrick shows us various locations starting with a giant statue of Christ and then we see a harbor where the large buildings on shore can be seen in the water. Rio de Jenero is the main focus here as we learn there are over two-million people living there and that many consider it the greatest city on Earth. We learn about the various races and religions that live there and how no one is looked down upon. T He beautiful beaches get some views as does the crystal blue ocean. If you've seen any shorts from this series then you'll know what to expect. We get the nice narration by FitzPatrick and some nice visuals thanks in large part to the Technicolor process. For the most part all of the scenes and stories are of some interest and the visuals are certainly worth looking at.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras down to Rio By The Sea-O, with Keith Covey to supervise the picture taking, while he goes into ecstasies over what he calls "the most beautiful city in the world."

High praise from someone who has rhapsodized over more than a hundred cities and countries in his long-running Traveltalks series. Arguably, it was the most successful travelogue series during the studio era, but besides the physical beauty of the city -- and some nice comments about Sao Paolo and the waters of the Amazon -- he sounds like he approves of Brazil's policy of being color-blind when it comes to people.

The copy of this movie that plays on Turner Classic Movies is in decent shape, although it looks like it was pulled from 16mm prints instead of the camera negatives or lavender dupes.