Carmen Miranda: Bananas is My Business

Carmen Miranda Bananas is My Business is a 1995 documentary filmed and directed by Helena Solberg. This documentary chronicles the life and career of Carmen Miranda, Hollywoods symbol of Latin American spirit in the 1940s. The documentary tells her life story in a series of stages, beginning with her roots and rise to stardom in her home country of Brazil, her transition and development as a performer in the United States, first on Broadway in New York City, then in the film industry after she signed with 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles, and her later years in life, before her death and her return to Brazil. Helena Solberg uses two different film styles, biography and directorial reverie, in which Solberg uses actor Erick Barretos to resurrect Carmen Miranda in several fantasy sequences. Helena Solbergs attitudes shift throughout the documentary from awestruck child to empathetic and forgiving Brazilian woman, which she uses to represent the contradictory subplots of Carmen Mirandas life. Alongside the fantasy like resurrection of Miranda, Solberg accompanies her documentary with multiple interviews with Carmen Mirandas friends and family, like her sister, her first boyfriend, the guitarist Laurindo Almeida, samba composer Synval Silva, Cesar Romero, and Alice Faye.

Carmen Miranda, an almost ghostly character in the imagination of Portuguese, Brazilian, and American audiences, comes back to life in the first scene of the documentary as a dream narrated by Helena Solberg. Images from her memorial service in Rio de Janeiro follow, showing the grief of her Brazilian fans as she says goodbye to what she considered her homeland. Born in the small Portuguese village of Varzea da Ovelha e Aliviada on February 9, 1909, Carmen was appropriated by the people of her village as a symbol of success. Making use of interviews with her younger sister Aurora Miranda, the documentary tales the migration story of Carmen, from Portugal to Brazil, where they arrived in November 1909. Carmen Miranda, daughter of a modest barber, Jose Maria Pinto da Cunha, lived in Rio de Janeiro. There, while working at a hat store, she was first discovered as a singing talent, growing up in Rio de Janeiro, as a working class adolescent, she noticed the strong influence of Samba music as a powerful cultural aspect of life in Rios slums.Embracing that current as a way of expressing herself as an artist, Carmen rose through the radio ranks, while In those days, a girl that sang on the radio was frowned upon In a world dominated by man, she was able to navigate through those struggles.As a local artist, she kept a close relationship with composer Synval Silva and Laurindo Almeida until she left for the United States. This opportunity came in 1939, when she performed along her band of Brazilian musicians. Carmen Miranda embarked on The Normandy for New York after being signed by Lee Shubert, who included her in the cast for Broadway play The Streets of Paris. This was the episode that transformed the life of who was later to be known as The Brazilian Bombshell. Once in New York, Carmen Miranda showed how her extravagant looks, and beautiful voice spoke for her, despite of the fact that her American audience could not understand a word she was speaking. ........

Source: Wikipedia