Aquarela do Brasil

Released on Febuary 6, 1943 as part of Saludos Amigos. "Aquarela do Brasil," or "Watercolors of Brazil," introduction of Jose Carioca.

It starts off with a paint brush painting wildlife scenes in Brazil and a song about Brazil playing. So plants and birds are being painted and there’s this one flower that’s painted (with two yellow flower petals) and a bee flies into it. The flower then turns into Donald and the bee is bouncing around inside Donald and it finally escapes. Donald is confused and then the paint brush (forth wall breaking if you're confused what I meant by that) comes into the scene again and starts painting the black colors of Jose (the tie, hat, and umbrella). Donald takes a bit of the black paint and has fun with it by drawing his own stick figure kind of drawing to the side, then the brush smacks him into a puddle of black ink. Donald comes back mad, but then we see Jose with more contour lines and the yellow areas colored (Jose’s eye is also following where the brush is going) and Donald is curious, “what’s this? A parrot?’ The paint brush then finishes painting Jose (I like this scene because Jose looks like he’s so happy to be alive), he twirls his umbrella and gives Donald his card. Donald mispronounces Jose’s name, the city and country on the card and Jose corrects him. In Portuguese, Jose asks for Donald’s card, Donald gives him one, Jose recognizes Donald’s name and is happy to meet him. He even does his own impression of Donald being angry jumping up and down which I think is very cute. So Jose is saying a whole bunch of stuff to Donald in Portuguese to which Donald pulls out a bunch of translation books to understand him. When Jose finishes, he says “Or, as you Americans say, let’s go see the town.”

So Donald walks with Jose and Jose says he will show Donald the land of the samba. Donald asks “what’s samba?” So music starts playing, Jose dances a bit, bops his own head with his umbrella for a bongo sound, and then plays the flute with it. He then takes Donald’s hat and plays the accordion with it. Donald tries to play the flute with Jose’s umbrella, but it doesn’t work and he gets frustrated with it. Jose takes the umbrella back and plays guitar with it. They dance along and walk down some steps that the paint brush in painting in front of them, they come to a café and site at the table outside. There’s a bottle of wine and Donald thinks it’s soda pop. Jose says that it’s cachaça, pours it into their glasses and says something in Portuguese. Donald takes a drink, and in the typical cartoon reaction, fire comes out of Donald mouth. Jose uses this fire to light his cigar and thanks Donald. Donald get’s the hiccups and a beat starts playing. Jose says “Donald, now you have the beat of the samba,” and he taps an a case of matches along with the beat. That’s the last we see of Jose when the paint brush comes in and paints some instruments playing a samba beat. Next, we see the silhouette of Donald and some lady through a window of a club dancing the samba. “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Samba!” Donald says. The song from the beginning of the cartoon starts playing again, the camera zooms out from the club to the city and that’s the end.