28 mins., b&w, sound – English titles and intertitles
Source : Library of Congress archive, also available on YouTube here, but the film is very badly damaged in the central passages.
An earlier silent version, dated to 1930-31 and with the title, Last of the Bororos, can be viewed at the NAFC (catalogue no. SA-76.5.1).
The NAFC also holds the texts of two different commentaries by Aloha Wanderwell in relation to this silent version of the film. One of these is a manuscript accessioned in 1977, following an interview that Aloha gave to the ethnographic film historian Emilie de Brigard the previous year. This appears to be a text for use in connection with ‘added attraction’ screenings at which Aloha herself appeared. The other text is based on the notes made by Jake Homiak, then director of the NAFC, during an interview that he conducted with Aloha in 1993.
There is also a later version of this film entitled Flight to the Stone Age and other South American Lands and released possibly as late as the 1970s, that combines some of the material that appears in The River of Death with material shot in a number of other South and Central American countries, as well as the US. Copies of this film are held by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and the Academy Film Archive.
See below for further details on these other versions.
Background – Aloha Wanderwell Baker (1906 or 1908-1996) was a celebrity travelogue film-maker who in the 1920s, travelling with her first husband, the self-styled ‘Captain’ Walter Wanderwell (1897-1932 ), made her name as the first woman to circumnavigate the world in a car, passing through some then-remote places in East and Central Asia as she did so.
Aloha was a stage name, as was her married name (Walter was born in Poland as Valerian Johannes Pieczynski). In fact, Aloha was born in Canada and grew up as Idris Hall. Shortly after returning from this shoot, Walter was murdered in still unresolved circumstances. The following year, Aloha remarried, taking her second husband’s family name, Baker, thereafter.
The material for this film was shot in 1930-31 when Aloha and ‘Captain’ Wanderwell travelled to Corumbá, a small town on the river Paraguay in Mato Grosso state, on the western frontier of Brazil. The ostensible purpose of this journey was to look for traces of Colonel Percy Fawcett, an eccentric British explorer who had disappeared in 1925 on an expedition to the upper Xingu river region.
However, this region lies about 1000kms to the northeast of Corumbá and if one were really looking for Fawcett, it would make more sense to start from the Mato Grosso state capital, Cuiabá, which is 500kms closer. This suggests that the search for Fawcett may have been an idea that was added at the post-production stage to give the film an extra dimension of interest for potential audiences.
Film Content – The first five minutes of the film is taken up with the journey to Corumbá, first by sea to Rio de Janeiro, then by train. As they pass through Rio, Aloha, ostentatiously wearing an aviator wings broach, meets at the grand Copacabana Hotel with the Brazilian national hero, General Rondon, described in Aloha’s voice-over as “a full-blooded Indian” (referring to Rondon’s part-indigenous inheritance) who provides her with some maps.
We then see Aloha and some companions (the exact number is never clear in the film) as they travel across the country by train, supposedly in a box car. In an obviously set up scene, Aloha cooks a meal while the ‘Captain’ plays a harmonica. This is one of a number of scenes in the film in which they both appear, thereby indicating that the attribution of the cinematography exclusively to them in the initial film credits is, at best, only part of the story.
In Corumbá (mispronounced as ‘Corúmba’ by Aloha), the Wanderwells hired an amphibious plane from Condor Air, a local affiliate of Lufthansa that provided a regular air service to Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso state. In the film, they take off with Aloha herself apparently piloting the plane. But although she had recently taken some flying lessons in Chicago, it would have been extremely risky for her to fly an unknown plane in unknown conditions – it seems far more probable that in reality the plane was flown by the German First World War veterans who were the regular pilots of Condor Air, with Aloha, at most, assisting.
They then make what is supposedly an emergency landing close to what the NAFC catalogue says is the Bororo village of ‘Bobore’. The evidence is contestable but some sources suggest that this is Pobore, a village which still exists today and which is located near the junction of the São Lourenço and Vermelho rivers.
But this is not only over 500kms short of the upper Xingu where Fawcett disappeared and which was supposedly the Wanderwells’ goal, but it is also more than 100kms south of the Rio das Mortes, the name of which, when literally translated, means ‘River of the Deaths’ and from which the title of the film derives, as indicated by the subtitle, erroneously rendered on screen in the opening shot as ‘Rio dos Mortes’.
The reliability of the footage concerning the Bororo of the village of ‘Pobore’ is no greater than the account of the journey to get there. The voice-over commentary is both highly fallacious and ethnocentric, even racist.
The arrival of the expeditionaries at the village begins with a truly comical enacted scene, as if it were a ‘first contact’ situation. As supposedly recommended by Rondon, Aloha leaves some mirrors on a log and climbs up a tree to observe. Sure enough, a man soon emerges from the undergrowth and contact is established.
However, the ‘indians’ in this scene are white-skinned actors who are certainly not Bororo. They are also wearing loincloths that traditionally the Bororo did not wear. In one of her commentaries in the NAFC, Aloha alludes to certain parts of the film having been filmed in Hollywood: this is surely a prime candidate to be one of those.
Once the expeditionaries enter the village, the wrap-around cloths worn by the women and the trousers worn by some men testify to the relationship that the villagers must have had with the non-indigenous world. In one scene of women pounding grain, in the background there are some people fully clothed in the European style, and beyond, a fence suggesting the presence of cattle. But in other aspects of dress and body decoration, and in terms of architecture and general layout, the village does appear to have preserved a largely traditional way of life.
Notwithstanding the egregious attitudes expressed in the voice-over, the film-makers appear to have established a good rapport with the villagers, not just through the giving of gifts but also through being prepared to participate in their lives. Both Aloha and the ‘Captain’ agree to have their faces painted, and Aloha participates in their dances. She is also filmed from afar bathing, apparently naked, with a group of Bororo women. The ‘Captain’, for his part, entertains the women by taking his false teeth in and out.
No doubt on account of this rapport, the Bororo seem remarkably relaxed in front of the camera, and there are some charming individual portraits. Although much of the filming of dancing is technically poor, apparently for having been filmed in low light, there are also some sequences that are interesting. This is particularly the case with a dance which is construed in the film as a farewell dance to the visitors and which, on these grounds, Aloha is allowed to observe, even though women are normally excluded from dances of this kind.
What this appears to be in reality is a dance of the kind that is performed at funerals when the spirits of the dead are thought to return to dance with the living. However, the coverage of the event is highly truncated because, as Aloha explains in one of her commentaries, in order to conform to then-current US censorship norms, it was necessary to edit out any images of genitalia. As many of the men who were dancing would probably have been wearing nothing more than a penis sheath fashioned from a rolled-up palm leaf, this would explain why there are so few shots of the event.
But apart from these brief moments and also some shots of women involved in everyday subsistence tasks around the village, there is almost nothing of genuine ethnographic value in this film and much that has been quite intentionally falsified.
The final part which begins with two men lying down and waving their arms histrionically is particularly absurd. Aloha claims in the voice-over narration that they are possessed by ‘the evil spirit’ and that the chief had wanted to burn them alive. Although she had managed to dissuade him, the house in which the men are imprisoned is burnt down during the night. But this dastardly act is carried out by the same group of loincloth-wearing non-indigenous actors who had appeared in the ‘first contact’ scene.
The following morning Aloha is shown poking around in the embers, relieved to discover that there is no trace of their remains. She therefore concludes that they must have made good their escape.
The next day, she makes good her own departure, even though she had not been able to discover anything about the fate of Colonel Fawcett – unsurprisingly, since as she herself explains, she has had to conduct her enquiries using sign language. Even if she had shared a language with the Bororo, it would have been difficult since Fawcett had disappeared some 500kms away and at least five years previously.
As the amphibious plane takes off with a canoe in the foreground, the voiceover offers a concise synthesis of the tropes that are typically at play in travelogues of this kind “And so we left this land of mystery, of beauty, and of danger, a paradise untouched by civilisation. Au revoir, we’ll come back again some day!’
Other versions – Last of the Bororos
Last of the Bororos, the version held in the NAFC collection and dated to 1930-31 has no titles, intertitles, nor any voice-over commentary or soundtrack of any kind. There are also some differences in terms of content. There is no journey by sea to Rio, as there is in The River of Death, rather the film begins with a rapid montage of images of the Bororo dancing, various dangerous animals associated with Amazonia (vulture, alligator, bat, snake) and Aloha herself, culminating in a shot of Aloha being fêted at the 1930 Chicago Air Races. This seems to be a pre-title sequence but in fact there is no main title and the action moves directly on to the meeting with General Rondon at the Copacabana Hotel.
The main body of the film is largely the same as in The River of Death, though here too there are certain differences. These include the scene shortly before the end in which two prone men are shown gesticulating. In The River of Death these men are said to be possessed by ‘the evil spirit’ while in Last of the Bororos, by contrast, they are said to be practicing some sort of couvade, i.e. ritual behaviour in which men engage when their wives are pregnant. The scene which followed in The River of Death, in which actors burn down the houses in which the two men are supposedly imprisoned, is completely absent in Last of the Bororos.
After the departure scene that also features inThe River of Death and serves as its conclusion, there is a rather disparate collection of shots in Last of the Bororos, some of which are repeats or perhaps alternative takes of shots that appear in the main body of the film. These appear to be outtakes. Mainly on account of these, the total length of Last of Bororos is about four minutes longer than The River of Death.
Taken all together, these various features suggest that the version held in the NAFC represents an assembly of materials to be used in conjunction with the text written to accompany Aloha’s personal appearances at screenings. Aloha is reported to have constantly re-edited her material for different audiences and this could have been the reason for the seemingly superfluous outtakes at the end of Last of the Bororos, i.e. they may represent shots that were included in some versions but not others, depending on the nature of the audience.
Whether this material was ever developed into a definitive form as a conventional release print with titles, intertitles and soundtrack is unclear. Although it is thought that Aloha recorded a voice-over narration for this version of the film, it does not appear to have been married and circulated with the print. Possibly, like the out-takes, its use may have depended on the nature of the audience and/or whether Aloha herself was present to provide live narration in person, in which case, it would have been superfluous.
Comparing The River of Death with Last of the Bororos more generally, it is clear that certain elements were added to the former to make it more entertaining for popular audiences. In addition to the elegant titles and jaunty Latino music track, there are also some additions to the content that would surely have had the same aim. These include the main title reference to the Rio das Mortes (which Aloha never reached), the trip across the Caribbean (in a hurricane, of course) and the heavy emphasis on the search for Fawcett (who disappeared some 500kms from the village supposedly visited by Aloha).
The scene added shortly before the end of The River of Death, in which non-indigenous actors burn down a group of houses and which was probably shot in Hollywood, adds an element of danger, even, it is hinted, to Aloha herself, thereby legitimating the reference to danger in the concluding passage of narration.
Other versions – Flight to the Stone Age
The banner headline of a flyer held in the NAFC relating to Flight to the Stone Age dates the film to 1930 (see above). However, this would appear to refer, not to the release date, but rather to the date of filming of some, though not all, of the footage. Meanwhile, the description of the film in the text of the flyer suggests that this version may not have been released until the 1970s since it promises that the film will show “ceremonies … captured over forty years ago”.
This description also indicates that this version has become even more fictionalised than The River of Death, with the expedition even being rescued by General Rondon. It also features material shot on Aloha’s journey down the river Paraguay in 1931, and various other sequences shot in South and Central America on her way back to the US.
The film is reported to conclude with a shot of the Graf Zeppelin airship as it was displayed at Chicago, thereby allowing this example of then state-of-the-art aviation to be contrasted with the ‘stone age’ Bororo. But this event did not take place until 1933.
Even with all the extra material, Flight to the Stone Age is still only 32 minutes in duration, i.e. no more than four minutes longer than The River of Death. This suggests that some of the sequences that appear in the latter were dropped.
Texts: Martins 2013c, da Cunha and Caiuby Novaes 2019.
Please note: The details concerning the manuscripts held by the NAFC are based on a personal communication from Jake Homiak in April 2020, while details about the Condor Air service are based on a personal communication from Eric Hobson, also in April 2020. See also the entry for the Women Film Pioneers Project website prepared by Jessica DePrest here.
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