This is an interesting curiosity piece in the history of Walt Disney Studios. When I was a kid, I saw the follow up to this film, The Three Caballeros, quite a few times and thoroughly enjoyed it but I'd never even heard of this one until I was much older and saw it for the first time when I was 22. It's not that well known to the general public and only the most die-hard Disney fans have probably seen it. In order to understand why that is so, you have to put the film into context. This film falls into the war period of the studio, the time when the studio had made its original classics Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi but wouldn't get back into its stride until 1950 with Cinderella. It was put into production in early 1941 and was released in Argentina in 1942 and America in 1943. By that time, the attack on Pearl Harbor had led to the studio being taken over by the United States military in order to produce propaganda and training cartoons, which halted all of Disney's other planned features for the latter part of the decade.
The purpose of Saludos Amigos was to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and South America as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. In order to do so, the U.S. Department of State commissioned a Disney goodwill tour that was intended to lead a film to that would be shown in both South American countries and the U.S. They chose Disney because several Latin America governments had ties to Germany and the purpose was to counteract those ties since Disney's characters and films were popular in those countries. Walt, acting as ambassador on the trip, and twenty members of his staff were given tours of countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru in order to inspire the film.
Not that I've given you your history lesson, let's talk about the film itself. It acts as a documentary of South American life and tradition, with 16mm film footage of the actual Disney team touring, experiencing and drawing the various cities and local traditions, with four cartoon segments inspired by the artists' experiences. The first cartoon shows Donald Duck as an American tourist at Lake Titicaca, meeting the locals as well as dealing with a stubborn llama. The second portrays a small mail plane named Pedro in his first flight alone to pick up air mail in Mendoza, which turns out to be a very dangerous trip. Next, we have a segment involving Goofy planted in the pampas of Argentina in order to learn the ways of a gaucho. And the finale of the film features Donald once again and introduces the suave, sophisticated parrot Jose Carioca, who shows Donald the sights of Brazil, as well as the samba.
While it's not one of Disney's best films by far and it even feels really dated, Saludos Amigos is an interesting time-killer. It's only 41 minutes long, so you won't be sacrificing much of your time for one thing. The documentary footage of the Disney artists exploring South America can sort of be viewed as a precursor to the True Life Adventures that would come later. The real footage of the various cities and countryside is quite beautiful to look at. While the footage is, naturally, worn by time, there are still good, colorful prints of it that bring out the beauty of the countryside.
The cartoon segments range from ordinary to funny to inspired. As much as I love Donald Duck, the Lake Titicaca segment with him honestly brings nothing new to the table and is just made of hijinks that he gets into, none of I which I find as funny as the stuff in his theatrical shorts. The segment featuring Pedro the mail plane does have some impressive animation, particularly when Pedro becomes lost in a storm and fights furiously to get the mail through. (Interestingly, the segment proved to be a bit controversial in Latin America. Rene Rios Boettiger, a Chilean cartoonist, saw the character of Pedro as an insult to Chileans and created a popular comic character called Condorito as a sort of payback to Disney.) My personal favorite segment is watching Goofy trying to learn the ways of the gaucho. It has all the elements of his popular How to... theatrical shorts, specifically How to Ride a Horse, and is enjoyable. My favorite part is when he tries to lasso an ostrich with bolas and the slow-motion segment that results. Suddenly, the segment goes back to normal speed and then gets faster and faster, with the narrator's voice speeding up accordingly. When he begins to narrate the next part, the man's voice is still cracked and he has to recover from it, which I can't help but snicker at. I also like when Goofy gets caught lip-synching to a record of a gaucho triste song by the classic gag of the record skipping. Finally, the finale segment Aquarela do Brazil (Watercolor of Brazil), starts out with some very impressive animation as we see an artist paint the scenery with watercolors. There are some points where he draws one thing and then adds more detail to turn them into something else. For example, he draws what looks like a cluster of bananas but then adds black paint to it, morphing them into a bunch of toucans. He also draws what appears to be a flower but when a bee flies into the petals, it begins to shake and morphs into Donald Duck, who's then introduced to Jose Carioca. Jose was be put to much better use in The Three Caballeros later.
The only real complaint I have about the film is the narrator throughout. I know it was traditional back then for these types of documentaries and educational films to be narrated but my biggest problem is how stuffy and cheesy the narrations always were. The narrator isn't that bad during the live action segments since those required narration as well as the Gaucho Goofy segment but he got in my nerves during the Pedro cartoon. He feels way too involved in the story and characters for me, instead of being simply an impartial observer, as he is in the rest of the film, which I prefer when it comes to narrators. That probably sounds silly and it's just my personal preference to this kind of film but that's how I feel.
Saludos Amigos is entertaining and informative but it's simply not one of my favorite Disney films. It's just far too simple, bringing nothing to the table other than being an above average documentary with some amusing cartoons sprinkled throughout, and it's dated. It simply served its purpose and then faded away into obscurity. It's available on DVD but people other than hardcore Disney fans probably know of it. However, it was popular enough to lead to The Three Caballeros, which I feel is vastly superior and entertaining, as we'll see next.
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