Saludos Amigos
Short description
Saludos Amigos mixes live action with animation in a series of short segments set across South America. Donald Duck and Goofy serve as travelling companions as the film moves from the Andes and the Argentine pampas to Rio de Janeiro. Donald has an encounter with a stubborn llama, while Goofy takes on the role of a South American cowboy. The parrot José Carioca also appears, and narration ties the musical and travelogue passages together.
The film was made by Walt Disney Productions, produced by Walt Disney and written by Ted Sears, Webb Smith and William Cottrell. It was directed by Bill Roberts, Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney and Norman Ferguson. For Luske it was the fifth of fifteen films he directed, following The Reluctant Dragon and preceding Make Mine Music, while for Jackson it was the tenth of seventeen, after Dumbo and before Song of the South. The voice cast includes Clarence Nash as Donald Duck, Pinto Colvig as Goofy and José Oliveira as José Carioca.
Released in August 1942 and running forty-two minutes, the film combines adventure, animation, documentary and music. It took about one million dollars at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds 6 out of 10 from more than 7,600 votes, and on TMDB 5.8 out of 10 from over 500 votes. A critics' rating of 6.3 out of 10 from sixteen reviews places it close to the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- In early 1941, before the United States entered World War II, the U.S. Department tasked Disney with leading a goodwill tour of South America. There, he was to create a film to be shown in the U.S., Central and South America as part of the Good Neighbor Policy. Disney was chosen for this because several Latin American governments had close ties with Nazi Germany, and the U.S. government wanted to counter these ties. Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters were very popular in Latin America, so Walt Disney was to act as an ambassador. Disney and a group of around twenty composers, artists, technicians, and others went on the tour, with the assistance of Nelson Rockefeller. They visited Brazil and Argentina, as well as Chile and Peru.
- The film inspired Chilean artist René Ríos Boettiger to create Condorito, who became one of the most famous animated characters in Latin America.
- The cartoon includes documentary footage showing modern Latin American cities with skyscrapers and fashionably dressed residents. This surprised many contemporary American viewers, who associated such a lifestyle only with the United States and Europe, and helped to change their perception of Latin America. Film historian Alfred Charles Richard Jr. noted that "Saludos Amigos" did more to cement a commonality of interests between the peoples of the Americas in a few months than the State Department had in fifty years.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
