The Golden Equator

Here's a travelogue about Ecuador. As is usual with them, there's a little history, a little about how modern it is, a little bit about local specialties, and a little bit about its charming peculiarities.

But was it so common? RKO vied with Columbia to be the last of the majors to continue to offer new short subjects for a complete movie program; Warners gave up the ghost the year this came out. The market for short subjects was growing very thin, so economy measures were in order. That's why this is a black-and-white short: nothing to compare to the Technicolor extravaganzas that MGM had offered for twenty years, or the widescreen Vistavision travelogues Paramount had turned out only a year before.

Still, for what it is, giving movie audiences a glimpse of a foreign land, it's pretty good.

The content of this short is good but ill served by murky B&W photography of what ought to be a colorful documentary on the background of Ecuador and its hardworking citizens working the land.

With its land located on the earth's equator, it's a sunny land where natives are hard at work producing the many products that they can sell to other countries--mainly cotton and bananas.

Having survived conquest by the Incas and the Spaniards (in search of gold), we get a glimpse of Quito, a city built on Indian ruins with gold and silver used for several churches, all bearing Spanish Baroque architecture.

A glimpse of modern Quito shows men working on a new railroad that will make shipment of goods easier. A market devoted to a hat fair shows women and children weaving straw hats in Panama hat fashion, by hand.

Good narration but poor photography makes this short less impressive than it ought to be. Too bad color wasn't used.

It's an RKO-Pathe documentary short about the country Equator and its bright future. Director Hamilton Wright seems to have made a career of happy documentaries of various exotic countries. He probably got a lot of help from the local governments. It's nothing more than a promotional short from the tourism department. Nevertheless, it's still fun to see the local flavors and interesting construction methods. The textile factory is fine, but I love hat making more. There is a lot to see here. The disappointing part is the black and white filming. It needs colors. With the tropical landscape and local costumes, vibrant colors would bring this to life.

Golden Equator, The (1956)

*** (out of 4)

Twenty-minute short shows the various ways that Ecuador is trying to build surroundings for the future. We see how their most valuable crop (bananas) are being traded so that they can get machinery to create roads, railways and help with exports like straw hats. This is a pretty good short from RKO that will remind many people of a TravelTalks episode, although this here is in black and white. The cinematography is actually quite good here as is the narration. One big difference between this and a TravelTalks entry is that this film really does try to tell a story. We learn about the countries troubles but get to see their plans for fixing them in the future. Seeing how much hard work was needed was especially interesting and you can see this just by the sequences where the men are building a new railroad.

Ir is true what others have said about this b&w movie; it should have been in color. The cinematography is pedestrian. The equator comes into play because this documentary, on Ecudor, tells us that the country straddles the Equator. The narration, of this 1956 movie, describes in warm tones the courageous spirit of the Ecudorian people that will move the the country into a golden future through industrialization, modern techniques, panama hats and bananas.

What is more heartbreaking than the poor production values of this film; is that in 2008 - more than fifty years later - the country is unable to pay its international debts. According to Wikipedia, Ecudor had 70% of the population "estimated to live below the poverty line" in the year 2000.