Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (1995)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Helena Solberg

Writer:

Helena Solberg (writer)

Release Date:

13 April 1995 (Brazil)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography

Plot:

A biography of the Portuguese-Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti frutti hat...

Plot Keywords:

Singer | 1940s | Fruit In Title | Actress | Carmen Miranda Impersonator

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Cynthia Adler	...	Hedda Hopper
Eric Barreto	...	Carmen Miranda, Fantasy Sequences
Mario Cunha	...	Himself
Alice Faye	...	Herself
Aurora Miranda	...	Herself
Carmen Miranda	...	Herself (archive footage)
Leticia Monte	...	Carmen Miranda, teenager
Rita Moreno	...	Herself
Cesar Romero	...	Himself
Synval Silva	...	Himself
Helena Solberg	...	Narrator

Also Known As:

Bananas Is My Business

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

UK | Brazil

Language:

English | Portuguese

Color:

Black and White | Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Channel Four Films

Movie Connections:

Features Week-End in Havana (1941)

Lacks ap-PEEL

This was a very odd documentary. Normally, I enjoy this forum of film. I enjoy learning about a person or events that I normally would never learn about. I love learning about famous people that to the normal eye would have a normal life, but behind the scenes it was nothing but trials and tribulations. The only issue I have is that sometimes it is hard to create a good documentary, or just another episode of E! True Hollywood Stories. That is exactly the line that Carmen Miranda: Bananas is my Business crosses.

This film goes from decent documentary into a slime fest for the "bombshell" beauty. The problem with this film is that the filmmaker takes too many assumptions with Carmen. For example, there are some scenes that were not captured on film when Carmen was alive, so the director chose to go ahead and place an actress (or in this very odd case and ACTOR) in a reenacting role of Carmen. There were several moments of this film where it would skip from filmed Carmen, to this actor Carmen and the director would take certain risks.

These risks should not be taken when creating a documentary. Why? Because again you are crossing a line. You are taking a documentary, one that lives in the world of fiction, and throw in areas of non-fiction. This cannot happen. You cannot jump genres. How is your audience to believe you? After watching some truths from the taped Carmen from her films, I had trouble jumping from one to the other. I couldn't keep track on what the director wanted to show as "real" and what was dramatized. That is definitely no way to create a story. For example, we open this film to Carmen walking around in her bath robe and suddenly falls, we witness the mirror that Carmen is carrying shatter in front of her. Now I know that the director was trying to show that a beauty, concerned most about her appearance, had a mirror (the sheer instrument of vanity) break in front of her. BUT THIS NEVER HAPPENED. I had to remind myself that the director was taking a chance here, causing my stomach to go down south. Can directors of documentaries take these chances?

Can they dabble the line between fiction and non-fiction while trying to tell a "true" story? My answer friends, is NO. But again, all I am is a mere critic, no director of documentaries.

Grade: ** out of *****