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Catherine L. Benamou

It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey Paperback – March 14, 2007

by Catherine L. Benamou (Author)

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Variously described as a work of genius, a pretentious wreck, a crucially important film, and a victim of its director's ego, among other things, It's All True, shot in Mexico and Brazil between 1941 and 1942, is the legendary movie that Orson Welles never got to finish. In this book, the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of It's All True available, Catherine Benamou synthesizes a wealth of new and little-known source material gathered on two continents, including interviews with key participants, to present a compelling original view of the film and its historical significance. Her book challenges much received wisdom about Orson Welles and illuminates the unique place he occupies in American culture, broadly defined.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of California Press
Publication date

March 14, 2007
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0520242483
ISBN-13

978-0520242487
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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"This is an extremely rigorous, thorough piece of superior scholarship on one of the most important figures in the history of cinema. Benamou introduces a wealth of material on the production process and the repercussions of this project in Latin America, which have been entirely missing from earlier, auteur-centered accounts; this alone makes it a book of great importance. We can't ask for a more definitive, groundbreaking study than the one Benamou has given us."―Bill Nichols, author of Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde

From the Back Cover

This is an extremely rigorous, thorough piece of superior scholarship on one of the most important figures in the history of cinema. Benamou introduces a wealth of material on the production process and the repercussions of this project in Latin America, which have been entirely missing from earlier, auteur-centered accounts; this alone makes it a book of great importance. We can't ask for a more definitive, groundbreaking study than the one Benamou has given us.--Bill Nichols, author of Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First edition (March 14, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520242483
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520242487
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,611,288 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #314 in Brazilian History
- #771 in Historical Latin America Biographies
- #1,154 in Movie Director Biographies

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Christopher Garcia

Orson Welles as Diplomatic Ambassador to South America? What Could Go Wrong?

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2018

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About as comprehensive a volume as could be written about Welles' Pan-American omnibus that went awry - packed with info, insights and long-buried details. I didn't realize that RKO spread out quite a substantial amount of the developed footage for 'It's All True' in other movies, never crediting Welles. The narrative leans toward scholarly, but that's more blessing than fault. It began as a diplomatic 'hands across the water' project initiated by Nelson Rockefeller, the US goverment and RKO to have resident Boy Wunderkind Orson Welles - fresh off 'Citizen Kane ' - go to South America and cover Carnival in Rio as a gesture of cross-cultural good will. What could go wrong? More to the point, what didn't? This vastly informative and detailed book also vividly illustrates how having to work against increasingly difficult and primitive conditions helped Welles develop his later stylistic abilities to create dazzling sequences under impossibly tight budgets and with very little back-up crew and no support from the proverbial and problematic 'front office'. By rejecting (and being rejected from) the studio system, it forced the endlessly inventive Welles to improvise his shots and ever-morphing visions with dazzling acumen. The book also vividly reminds us that, in addition to being a showman in all meanings of the word, Welles was an articulate and passionate advocate for global cultural issues, an articulate ambassador, diplomat and canny politician, with an impressive ability to emerse himself into a foreign culture and be embraced as an extended family member. A real wealth of info here on 'what might have been'. It's a shame 'It's All True' was never completed, but a blessing that it left this impressive chronicle in its wake.

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Jonathan Rosenbaum

The definitive book about Orson Welles' most misunderstood project

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2007

The fact that Catherine L. Benamou's eye-opening and sometimes mind-blowing book about Orson Welles in Latin America happens to be academic shouldn't scare off anyone apart from a few timid anti-intellectuals. There are important discoveries to be found on virtually every page of this book, most of them couched in prose that to my taste goes down far easier than the fuming of "verfoleme" in his own review of this book. Of course you can single out graceless phrases in a good many books (as well as in a good many spiteful Amazon reviews) if that's what you're looking for--but why bother when there's so much to learn here? Benamou's factual nuggets and her critical and political insights place this book so far beyond most studies of Welles in any language, including English, that she radically revises the whole tenor of what scholars and journalists have been writing about "It's All True" for the past 65 years. You might even say that she permanently changes our discourse on the subject, and any scholar who does that deserves our deepest gratitude. And Benamou brings so much background knowledge to bear on the subject--not only about Welles, but also about Brazil and Brazilian culture, Pan-American history and film history--that we'll still be deriving pleasure and edification from this book for many decades to come.

11 people found this helpful

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verfoleme

important subject smothered in grotesque prose

Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2007

"Textophagy"--better like the word, because you'll encounter dozens of such coinages "imbricated" (more fashionable terminology of this ilk) in the author's impenetrable prose: "Just as donning false noses and epidermises allowed Welles to take on significantly different personae while remaining easily recognizable to the public--thereby disclosing the fact of the prothesis to any viewer who had seen him in other performances--his recuperation of the lost work in progress does not involve erasure and forgetting, achieved through the decontextualization and compositional simulation (by way of suturing) of dismembered elements. Instead, it speaks to the reclamation and remembrance by way of bricolage of the text he had originally envisioned." It's the quaint, now antiquated thereobabble (to insert a coinage of my own) of humanities graduate schools in the late 1980s and 1990s. NYU (and the others) can't be entirely blamed for this--Benamou had adequate time to outgrow it in the decade between her 1997 dissertation and the publication of this book. (Also badly needed: a refresher course in the real-life economics of the film industry.) There's deep research behind this effort, and it yields up a wealth of invaluable new information on this pivotal project in Welles' career; let us hope that someone extracts it and blogs it in comprehensible form and that Benamou assents to the process (she holds the copyright): that, plus the reconstruction project of surviving footage she's heading in conjunction with UCLA Film/Television Archive, might turn out to be her most important contributions to Welles scholarship.

9 people found this helpful

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Wingate

Academic Jargon makes for a dull book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 24, 2014

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The story of Its All True is extremely fascinating.Alas due to the academic jargon used by the author and her very dry style she renders the story very dull.She concludes at the end that the non completion of the film was no ones fasult in particular.However it becomes clear that she puts more of the blame on RKO tthan anyone else..How else can you interpret her byline accusing RKO of "pirating" of Its all True.That is of using the material elsewhereGiven that RKO had spent $60000 on Technicolour stock and would of course own the copyright it is difficult to comprehend her allegation.
More evidence of her bias towards Welles is the fact that she claims that if RKO had had an office in Argentina they would have been able to exploit the showing of "Ciotizen Kane" more fully..Given the film showed a loss of $160000 on its first release it is doubtful whether this would have made any substantial difference.
She points to the success of the 2 films made by Walt Disney with South American themes but I do not recall her mentioning that they were distributed by RKO.
She does not mention that Welles had a contractual obligation to bring in the film with a maximum budget of $500000 and was well overbudget when the film was closed down.She fails to quote from the alarming reports of production manager Lynne Shore.
It is quite clear that the production was chaotic to say the least.Joseph Biroc,in the documentary "The RKO Story" states that he was photographing the carnival for 4 days straight and was then sent home to rest by Welles for 7 days.
The one point where I agree with the author is that RKO was the wrong studio for this project.They had only recently come out of receivership.Only 4 of their previous seasons films made a six figure profit.Production chief George Schaffer brought in Welles as a prestige signing.Not only was it not working out,with his contract close to expiring his own job was on the line.In fact unsurprisingly it was not renewed.
So nobody comes out well from this saga.Welles of course would have many similar situations where he had difficulty finishing films.I only wish this had been written by a non academic author.

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