Looking at Lisbon

TravelTalks goes to Portugal and visits its capital. For most of it, it's one building after another. I guess if one wants to have a boring sightseeing tour of the city, that would be great. I'm more interested in seeing the cars.

It's nice to see the people. All the women seems to be carrying heavy loads on their heads. Then there is the bull running. The bull running is the best part by far. It's even better than the bull fighting. TravelTalks is coming to an end by this point. I can see how this was dated even during the 50's. The film quality is not good enough and the travelogue is getting stale. Although, I do love the bulls.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras to the capital of Portugal, with Hone Glendinning to run the cameras in this late example of his Traveltalks series for MGM. Fitzpatrick's commentary is more overtly directed at tourists than usual, commenting about the reasonable rates for staying at the hotels of Estoril, although he doesn't neglect the weird stuff, like running wild wolves and bulls through the center of the town. There's also some discussion -- and pictures, of course -- about the Portugese style of bullfighting.

The copy of this movie that plays on Turner Classic Movies looks like it has been overexposed slightly, and the image quality indicates it has been drawn from a 16mm TV prints.

Looking at Lisbon (1953)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another nice entry in MGM's long-running TravelTalks series. This one here takes us to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal where at the time one-million people were living. We learn about the early history of Lisbon including it being destroyed by earthquakes and tidal waves in 1755 only to be rebuild shortly afterwards. We learn about it's importance as trade routes for ships and see the famous sidewalks that help tourist find what they're looking for. Also on hand are "fish women" who, as their name might suggest, are women who carry fish around to sell. We also see some wild bulls let loose in the streets and apparently this is done to put the fear of Satan into people. Looks like they'd just put the fear of bulls into people but whatever. If you're a fan of the series then you know what to expect and the short pretty much delivers that. We get the nice narration by James FitzPatrick and of course the Technicolor is a major plus.