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THE
NEW CINEMA MEETS CINEMA NOVO: Lúcia Nagib However, it would be inadequate to consider this 'nostalgia for Brazil' a return to the nationalism that became typical of Brazilian cinema in the 60s. There is, it is true, a desire to re-discover the country, and films like Central Station, which runs through Brazil from the southeast to the northeast, or even Bocage (Djalma Limongi Batista, Brazil, 1998), which pans over the majestic landscapes of seven Brazilian states, are evidence of this desire. But now, instead of the political Brazil which the Cinema Novo film makers wanted to reveal, it is an intimate Brazil that they aspire to portray. A clear example of this cinema of intimacy is Tata Amaral's Um céu de estrelas/Starry Sky (Brazil, 1997). Its story is undoubtedly located in Brazil and in São Paulo, and even in a very precise district, Mooca. However, it concentrates obsessively on the individuality of the characters to the detriment of the social context, being limited basically to two protagonists enclosed in the tiny rooms of a poor house. Even the films about the poor northeast of Brazil - a wide and remarkable current in contemporary Brazilian cinema, engaged in citing, honoring and even copying Glauber Rocha and the Cinema Novo - more often than not emphasize individual characters and fates, putting social issues in second place. A guerra de Canudos/The War of Canudos (Brazil, 1997), by Sérgio Rezende, is a good example of this phenomenon. Developing an intermediate aesthetics between soap opera and mainstream American cinema, the film takes so long to describe the falling apart of the members of a migrant family, that the intricate war epic breaks into large gaps, becoming at times incomprehensible. In the case of the northeast films, this tendency to explore individual characters - who, in the old Cinema Novo films, were seen rather as social types - has been giving some interesting results. For example, Baile perfumado/Perfumed Ball (Brazil, 1997), by Lírio Ferreira and Paulo Caldas, whose subject is the legendary figure of cangaceiro [3] Lampião, focuses not on his activities as an outlaw, but on his private life. The frightening bandit reveals himself as a man very conscious of his looks, who, in the middle of the caatinga (the semi-desert backlands), enjoys perfuming himself, exchanging caresses with his wife and dancing. A similar example would be Corisco e Dadá/Corisco and Dadá (Brazil, 1996), by Rosemberg Cariry, which privileges the love relationship between the cangaceiro Corisco and his companion Dadá, rather than his activities in the cangaço. In both cases there is a strong documentary element, apparently aimed to prove the reality of the facts told, which makes these films in a sense even more 'realistic' than the Cinema Novo ones, which foregrounded realism. Perfumed Ball restores the famous images that survived from the film about Lampião and his gang shot by Lebanese peddler Benjamin Abraão, in which we see, among other things, the famous 'perfumed balls' [4]. Cariry also based his film on documentary researches, interviewing the true Dadá, who was alive until recently, and using the same footage shot by Benjamin Abraão. These and other examples sometimes succeed in giving the impression that contemporary cinema in Brazil seeks to tell the 'true stories' which Cinema Novo used to fictionalize. The End of Allegories Since the 60s, it has become usual to define Third World cinema, especially that of Latin America, as a cinema of allegories. These allegories were supposedly determined, on the one hand, by the overwhelming political situation (for the general misery was more important than individual problems); and, on the other, by repressive governments, which forbade the denouncing of the reasons of this misery unless it was made in allegorical language. Fredric Jameson, in a recent work appealing to the thesis of 'national cinemas against Hollywood', describes the 'imperfect cinema' - the proposal put forward by Julio García Espinosa which, for Jameson, summarizes the cinematic aesthetics of the Third World as a whole - as 'allegorical' for in it, 'the form is invoked to express specific attitudes toward the contents, as if to connote its essential aspects' (Jameson 1995: 223-224). Such a conception, which was already reductionist at its time, has become ineffective nowadays, at least as far as Brazilian cinema and its recent developments are concerned. Ismail Xavier, who in his Allegories of Underdevelopment (1993) described so well the allegorical character of Brazilian films in the period of Cinema Novo and Underground Cinema - movements strongly inspired by the national project - joins together with João Luiz Vieira and Robert Stam to point out the risks of 'hasty generalizations' promoted by ideas such as Jameson's. The authors refer specifically to the famous essay 'Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism', in which Jameson states that all Third World texts are 'necessarily allegorical [...]. Even those texts invested with an apparently private or libidinal dynamic [...] necessarily project a political dimension in the form of national allegory, the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third world culture and society' (Johnson and Stam 1995: 393-394). Xavier, Vieira and Stam question such conclusions, for 'it would be problematic to posit any single artistic strategy as uniquely appropriate to the cultural productions of an entity as heterogeneous as the "Third World"' (Johnson and Stam 1995: 394). Today more than ever, such theories would have little use in explaining the situation of Brazilian cinema. The interest in the homeland shown by the majority of Brazilian film makers has ceased to reflect nationalism as it was conceived in the 60s. If sometimes contemporary Brazilian cinema betrays a certain pride (in the fascination for landscapes, for example), this is due to prevailing conditions (the market, for instance) rather than to anachronistic patriotic feelings. An important fact is that Brazilian culture can sell well inside Brazil. In several fields, foreign cultures, especially American culture, has ceased to be the threat it represented some decades ago. The most obvious case is that of popular music. The supplement 'Mais!', of the daily newspaper Folha de S Paulo (April 12, 1998), published a series of articles on the general subject 'The Emergent Mass Culture'. One of them, called 'The Complicity of the Audiences', written by musician and musicologist Luiz Tatit, makes some amazing assertions, if one compares them with the desperate cries of those who until recently accused American imperialism of massacring Brazilian culture. Tatit notes that the stars of axé music (including the timbalada and the olodum) and the pagode [5] groups sell at least ten times more in Brazil than the greatest hits of international pop music, such as Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston or Michael Jackson. Also Brazilian rock, says Tatit, is at its height in terms of numbers. Then the author asks: 'What now? What should we do with this reversal of expectations? Could it be that the dream has begun and we are not prepared to interpret it?' Tatit makes an inventory of musicians of different genres and styles, stating that all of them are doing exactly what they want. Their music was not imposed upon them by a market which had been dominated for a long time by American music, and under whose shade they developed in a kind of underground, counter-current movement, but has been naturally encompassed by the recording companies, who see the profitability of Brazilian music. Tatit is now alarmed by a danger that would be unimaginable some time ago: that Brazil could shut itself in its own music, becoming impoverished culturally. And he concludes:
As recently as 1980, Afredo Bosi still regretted that the 'economic power of the media' would 'abolish, in various times and places, the expressions of popular culture, reducing them to the function of folklore for tourists' (1992: 328). But today what the media broadcasts is nothing but Brazilian popular culture, and if it is often of bad taste, it does not for that lose its Brazilian character and its enormous popularity. Fortunately or unfortunately, mass culture today, in Brazil, is not imposed from outside, but comes, in great part, from inside: local popular culture and mass culture have become almost identical with each other. Following this general trend, the contemporary Brazilian film maker seems to be on good terms with his or her country, although, as we know, the main problems of social inequality that plagued Brazil in the Cinema Novo days have essentially remained the same. One even breathes a certain freedom, since foreign influence has ceased to be a danger and appropriate elements, no matter where they come from, have ceased to be a sin. The appropriations carried out in the past by 'tropicalists', who used to mix the national and the foreign, the kitsch and the cultivated, do not represent any scandal at all today, but a rather natural and everyday attitude. Because nationalism can only develop in the face of an external threat, it has become superfluous in Brazil. One can even believe that cinema will one day experience a similar phenomenon to that which is happening now to music. Indeed, Brazilian film history has gone through several periods of box office peaks in the past, for example in the time of chanchada (Brazilian musical comedies of the 40s and 50s) or during the climax of Embrafilme (the public production company). Contrary to what foreign film distributors insist on spreading through the media, there is a natural preference among local audiences for Brazilian cinema, which today depends principally on a better distribution system for its full development. One only needs to look at what is happening with the multiplex cinemas, a very recent phenomenon which is beginning to spread through the outskirts of São Paulo. In these numerous and ultra-modern screening rooms, European cinema is totally absent, whereas, together with the American cinema, Brazilian films such as Central Station or Tizuka Yamazaki's O noviço rebelde (Brazil, 1997), starring comedian Renato Aragão, are absolute box office hits. If Brazilian films still occupy a minimal part of the theaters, this is certainly not due to the lack of interest of the audiences, but rather to the hegemony of American distribution chains and the absence of a local policy of screen quota, an issue that has been endlessly discussed - and never solved - since the passing of the Audiovisual Law. The Recurrence of the Northeast Motif However, the question remains: why do so many young film makers turn to themes once explored by Cinema Novo, which was moved by the need to explain and mould the national identity? For certain, they feel the urge to look again to their country. But this new look is not politically oriented as it was in the past, because, in the real contemporary political context, nothing would sustain such attitude. Nevertheless, the interesting Northeastern cycle of today constantly evokes, in the form of a nostalgic homage, the nationalistic tone of the past. The film makers themselves are the first ones to acknowledge this. Rosemberg Cariry, when he was shooting Corisco and Dadá, declared: 'I decided to make films when I first saw O dragão da maldade contra o santo guerreiro/Antonio das Mortes (Brazil, 1969), by Glauber Rocha. He and I have in common the sertão [6], the imagery, the archetypes and the same impulse.' [7] And Walter Salles, the award winning director of Central Station, reaffirms tirelessly in his interviews his desire to pay homage to Cinema Novo directors, such as Nelson Pereira dos Santos and his Vidas secas/Barren Lives (Brazil, 1963), Glauber Rocha and his Antonio das Mortes, both films dealing with the lives of migrants, as he himself did in his film: 'What I found in this kind of cinema is what Hélio Pellegrino [...] once said, after watching a Glauber Rocha film: "This film grabs the jugular of Brazilianness."' In fact, this is what Cinema Novo did, it created the possibility of a cinema that could be the mirror of Brazilianness [8]. How can one conceive a national attitude devoid of nationalism? How can contemporary film makers - who come from privileged social classes which are far away from the withered sertão they focus on and who are destitute of any political project that could connect them to it - relate to their object? Alfredo Bosi used to say that 'high culture wants to feel a shiver before the savage' (1992: 330), and up to a certain point this attraction to the exotic and the different, as a kind of chic, could be ascribed to the new film makers. Despite all the changes Brazil has been through, it still continues to be a country of unjust social divisions, with great gulfs between the classes, and this is totally visible in the country's different cultural layers and the way they relate to one another. But if there is fascination for the different, there is certainly also solidarity. This differs greatly from the former patronizing attitude, which often resulted in populist cinema or art marked by a high degree of manipulation and distortion. The film makers of today, who are much less ambitious than their predecessors of the Cinema Novo (nobody aspires after a revolution or the inauguration of a new art form), seem to be simply observing and recording a people who are usually excluded from the high cultural media, letting them express themselves in their own way. In the process, the old desire to denounce gives way to a respectful attitude towards popular culture, an attitude that is not political, but politically correct. Thus, popular art forms such as 'cordel' (northeastern oral literature printed in booklets) or religious chants appear in these films in a more direct manner, without the interpretative intermediary of an 'organic intellectual' - following Gramsci's concept that so much inspired Glauber Rocha and other Cinema Novo directors. This is how Marilena Chauí explains Gramsci's ideas that prevailed during Cinema Novo era:
It is easy to recall how the people appeared in the three most important of Glauber Rocha's films: Deus e o diabo na terra do sol/Black God, White Devil (Brazil, 1967), Terra em transe/Land in Anguish (Brazil, 1967) and Antonio das Mortes. They were almost invariably a mass of zombies, in a sort of permanent trance, given to repetitive and hypnotic religious chants and entrusting their destiny to a messianic leader of dubious intentions. And there was always a middle class intellectual - in the famous definition by Jean-Claude Bernardet (1967), in Brasil em tempo de cinema - in charge of interpreting the people's will. A noted example is the sequence in Land in Anguish where poet and journalist Paulo Martins covers the mouth of union leader Jerônimo, while he exclaims: 'Do you see what the people are? An imbecile, illiterate, politically unaware! Can you imagine Jerônimo ascending to Power?' Instead of portraying, as Rocha's films did, a people forever incapable of articulate and coherent speech, films like Crede-mi (by Bia Lessa and Dany Roland, Brazil, 1997) and Central Station prefer to offer the microphone to the people in order to let them express themselves as they wish. The interpreter of the popular voice does not seem necessary any more. Obviously, the discourse resulting from such expressions has no political content, but it remains nevertheless worthy of credit. At the beginning of Crede-mi, for instance, a narrator presents himself in the person of an elder, who begins to narrate the genesis of the world according to the Bible, as if God were a relative of his:
The narrative develops from his words (even though it does not make reference to them) and, from time to time, the old man reappears and announces: 'And there is a page that says this', and then a new part of the film begins. The old man is toothless, wrinkled, clearly poor, and his language is truncated and grammatically incorrect. But his poverty and probable ignorance or illiteracy do not discredit him as a narrator of the story. On the contrary, the shooting and editing are dedicated to conferring authority and effectiveness on his words. Central Station opens with startling images, the first of them of an illiterate woman (the former prisoner Socorro Nobre, as the credits later reveal, to whom Walter Salles had previously dedicated a documentary film), who dictates a letter to somebody off-screen. In a frontal close-up, the woman, with her face bathed in tears, sobs her message to her companion who is in prison: 'Darling, my heart belongs to you. Whatever you have done, I don't care. I love you. I love you. The years you'll spend locked inside there, I'll spend them locked outside here, waiting for you.' This is followed by other close-ups of people dictating letters, who are clearly lay actors chosen among the local passers-by. And if they give evidence of the unjust situation of a country that has illiterate people, their speech is by no means political in itself. They are simply speaking, using their right of expression without the mediation of an interpretative narrator.
Popular Culture and Religion When it comes to popular culture, religion is the element that immediately emerges as the guide to general behaviour. Thus, inevitably, religion or the various popular religions appear in profusion in the new films. However, religion as 'the opium of the people' or religious feeling as a direct result of poverty - ideas that had a strong resonance in Rocha's films, especially in the early period of Barravento (Brazil, 1961) - have disappeared from contemporary Brazilian cinema. In films like Crede-mi, Central Station, Perfumed Ball, The War of Canudos, Corisco and Dadá and many others, popular religion (which, in Brazil, is marked by a broad syncretism and the worshipping of messianic characters who are often secular) is a cultural element to be respected as much as any other. It is perhaps worthwhile to recall how Marilena Chauí related popular culture and religion two decades ago, expressing ideas which were also typical of some films of Cinema Novo:
Chauí concludes, interpreting the appeal to religion as a compensatory mechanism:
This sort of interpretation, which sees religious feeling exclusively as a substitute for failing social institutions, has a simplistic character that has already been acknowledged by Chauí herself. And it has lost its meaning completely today, at least as far as cinema is concerned. In the recent films, religious feeling is by no means a direct result of economic factors. The poor are not shown as though they are condemned to religion and to the deprivation of any kind of pleasure or happiness. Religion appears instead as a cultural option among others - and in fact a rich and interesting one. One only needs to look at the documentary shots of the processions in Crede-mi or the religious festival in Central Station, or even the mass said by Lampião to his gang to see an anthropological or aesthetic interest, and certainly a respectful fascination on the part of the contemporary narrator. Popular Culture and High Culture In the cinema of the 60s, the combination of popular and high culture echoed both the concept of Gramsci's organic intellectual and the democratic principles of Brazilian modernism, which tried, in a single move, to banish elitism from high culture and to enhance the importance of popular culture. Such attitude permeates Cinema Novo as a whole, as Randal Johnson describes well in the chapter 'Modernism and Cinema Novo' in Literature and Cinema (1982: 43-65). In his films, Glauber Rocha worked tirelessly on the blending of popular and high art in music and literature. Guimarães Rosa and Euclides da Cunha were mixed with cordel, Villa-Lobos and Bach were juxtaposed with the romance songs of the sertão, furnishing the very structure of Black God, White Devil. However, both in the literary and the musical blending, it became clear that the high art element was interpretative in relation to the popular, providing it with direction and sense, and that this was done in order to eliminate from the purely popular expression its conformist narrowness and its naiveté, full of 'reactionary' elements. There is even an 'intermediate' music - the songs sung by Sérgio Ricardo - which structures the plot of the film and whose verses were composed by Glauber himself based on Northeastern popular songs, to which was added a political meaning. Once again Crede-mi offers us an example of the reverse process: it is the ordinary people of Ceará's backlands who recite the text of the extremely erudite novel of Thomas Mann, Der Erwählte/The Holy Sinner. Thus, the illiterate people take hold of a sophisticated text, giving it their own interpretation. In the same sense, in Perfumed Ball, a peddler acquires a movie camera with which he intends to film Lampião, 'the king of cangaço', and, in the end, it is Lampião himself who uses the machine to shoot the first takes of the film. Here again it is the marginal population which takes hold of the tools of the ruling class. In Crede-mi, popular and classical music, as Cinema Novo intended, moved as it was by a revolutionary impulse, at least in the beginning. In Perfumed Ball, the development is even more curious: the music track, composed by Chico Science and Fred Zero Quatro, is made of a mixture of northeastern rhythms (especially the baião) with American pop, resulting in what they call 'mangue beat'. Lírio Ferreira and Paulo Caldas explain their intention as follows:
When film directors no longer take high culture but mass culture as their own point of reference, the hierarchy in relation to the popular is naturally changed: classical, popular and mass culture start to interact on the same level. Consequently, the fear of 'cultural imperialism' disappears: 'mangue beat', 'árido movie', 'Chico Science', etc are intentional juxtapositions of English and Portuguese words, within that same Northeast once chosen by the nationalists as the cultural storehouse of Brazil, but today - at least in the cinema - internationalized. Such a vision would perhaps fit in with the critique already addressed by Roberto Schwarz to the 'globalists' of today, who would have us believe that 'the reign of mass communication is liberal or acceptable from an aesthetic point of view' (Schwarz 1987: 34). Also because, as Schwarz (1987: 34) argues:
I do not believe, however, that today's film makers are triumphalists or blind to Brazil's social problems. They seem, instead, before taking any side, to be researching, analyzing, observing from a certain distance, testing the reality they find - hence the highly documentary aspect, already noted, of films like Crede-mi or Perfumed Ball. Fernando Gabeira, in a recent article, does not see in Central Station a political proposal, but he indentifies in it issues that could eventually lead to political discussions. Gabeira suggests:
Post-utopian Moment This apparent political vacuum, at the same time inextricably linked with a politically correct attitude, occurs at a moment in Brazilian cinema that could be called 'post-utopian'. The utopia of the past is recalled in today's films with reverence and nostalgia, but as something already gone, or even something that has already been realised. The sea was the main symbol for the revolutionary utopia that inspired Cinema Novo. The prophecy of the sertão that turns into a sea, expressed in Black God, White Devil, announces the social revolution that will close a historic cycle of Brazil. The film is thus structured in a circular form, opening with long-lasting aerial shots of the caatinga and closing with other aerial shots, this time of the sea. Giving a sequel to this ending, Land in Anguish begins with even more monumental visions of the ocean, taking place in the fictitious country of Eldorado, that is, the Eden dreamed of by the Portuguese and Spanish discoverers. In Black God, the broad images of the sertão and the sea correspond to the prophecy, used by Glauber Rocha in a revolutionary tone, that 'the sertão will turn into a sea, and the sea will turn into the sertão.' This phrase is proffered by Manoel's leaders 'Saint' Sebastião and then the cangaceiro Corisco and, finally, taken up again by the song, written by Glauber Rocha himself together with Sérgio Ricardo, which constitutes the off commentary. The prophecy is taken from Os sertões, where Euclides da Cunha quotes it from small handwritten and anonymous notebooks found in Canudos [11]. The original actually stated that 'the sertão will turn into a beach and the beach into the sertão.' The phrase, in an apocalyptic tone, predicts an inversion of values, in which the Brazilian coast, which is historically wealthy, would become poor and the poor rural areas, that is the sertão, would become wealthy. The announcement of the great transformation continues, predicting the appearance of a paradisiacal land, where rivers of milk flow and mountains of corn couscous rise up. Another of Rocha's sources (not only for Black God, White Devil), Grande sertão: veredas/The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, by Guimarães Rosa, also works with mythical images of the vastness of the backlands, equivalent to that of the waters. 'The sertão is everywhere' is the book's famous universalizing refrain, for which Rocha found a very appropriate image in the opening shots of Black God. Minas Gerais, where the story of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands takes place, has no seacoast, but Rosa plays with the vastness of the São Francisco river (rio São Francisco), from which he takes the name of the main character, Riobaldo, besides comparing the green eyes of Diadorim, another protagonist, with the vastness of the sea: 'Morreu o mar, que foi' ('the sea has died and gone'), says the text, at the time of the death of this character (Rosa 1984: 562). The origin of these images of sea and vastness, so frequent in Brazilian literature and art, is perhaps connected with certain indigenous myths that see paradise as a sea or a great river. Rosemberg Cariry states that he used the image of great waters in Corisco and Dadá based on this mythology:
Cariry is not the only one to use the sertão/sea imagery, consciously making reference to Rocha and Rosa. It is indeed a curious thing to observe how the filming of these great water expanses is again a constant part of recent Brazilian movies. The ghost of Rocha is far from being exorcised from Brazilian cinematic imagery. Sertão of Memories (by José Araújo), although set in the arid backlands, begins and is interlaced with images of great bodies of water. Perfumed Ball lingers over grandiose images of the São Francisco river and ends with a solitary Lampião in aerial shots over the banks of the impressive river. In Crede-mi, the long initial tracking shot over the sea, which in the beginning does not give a clearly defined image, could be seen as a reproduction of the primordial chaos from which God created the world: it is nearly a vision of paradise. From this image of the sea appears the superimposed hand of the old man who narrates the genesis. Throughout the film, as the old man 'turns the page of the book', new images of great waters appear, calling up the myth. Still another film, Bocage (by Djalma Limongi Batista), seeks, more than any other, to render a vision of the totality of Brazil, having been shot in seven Brazilian states: Ceará, Amazonas, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Minas Gerais, Paraná and São Paulo (and also in Portugal, a fact that once again shows the wish to approach the origin). The film opens with monumental aerial images of the sea, on which the poet wanders, imprisoned in a floating cage. The poet's arrival on terra firma is, incidentally, a kind of discovery of Brazil that recalls and parodies the one staged by Rocha in Land in Anguish, with allegories of the First Mass. In all these recent films, the aspiration for the future (the revolutionary hope) gives way to an archaeological investigation (the myth of the origin), which tries to dig out historical facts in order to reconstruct the image of an individual character, connected to a landscape and a culture; only after that, in a second stage (they seem to say) would it be possible to think about proposals for change. For now, what is being done seems to be, above all, a careful work of recognition. Uncritical Behaviour This basic structure of the recent films on the northeast is in general repeated in the urban films. There is a search for something like a political exemption, one limits oneself to the respectful observation of the other, the different, that is, the one coming from another social class. An accomplished example (and, in my opinion, very well done indeed) is the already mentioned Starry Sky, by Tata Amaral. The story takes place in a huis clos, between two basic characters: Dalva, a hair dresser who has won a trip to Miami, where she intends to take part in a contest; and Vítor, her ex-fiancé, who rebels against the impending departure of the girl. Vítor forces his way into Dalva's house, tries to make up with her, and, failing to achieve it, kills Dalva's mother, before finally being murdered by Dalva herself. This sequence of events develops in an extremely ambiguous way: several times Dalva gives in to Vítor's pressures and even has sex with him right after he murders her own mother. In the same way that the sertão films make explicit references to Cinema Novo, this paulista film is reminiscent of São Paulo's underground cinema of the late 60s and early 70s. In them, we find again those degraded, camp, ugly characters, coming from a shabby, mediocre lower middle class, almost totally devoid of beauty and pleasure, who were so common in the films by Sganzerla, Tonacci and others who shot the city of São Paulo in those decades. In Starry Sky the basis of the plot is political - the decay of an old labour district, that is now plagued by unemployment - and emphatically so in Fernando Bonassi's novel that was the origin of the film. The script went through innumerable versions, made by Amaral herself and others; the final version was the work of Jean-Claude Bernardet and Roberto Moreira. The changes introduced by the scriptwriters are significant in their elimination of social-political references. In a recent public talk, Tata Amaral stated:
Amaral insists that human incoherence and a person's reactions cannot be explained in a mechanical way by the social context: 'In the film, Vítor is not fired, he resigns from his job. It is not the victim of a system who forces himself into his ex-fiancée's house.' This radical attitude leading to the elimination of political and psychological justifications actually first came from Jean-Claude Bernardet, who explains it in an article called 'Tragedy':
There is no doubt that the characters are Brazilians, and from a very specific region of Brazil. They are, moreover, entirely determined by the cultural, economic and political factors of this region. However, the film tries to show them as human beings, without judging them and without presenting solutions. Again, there is some kind of respect for their kitschy taste, their houses decorated with cheap, bad taste objects; there is something human about all this, which is what matters in the story. It is easy to conclude that brega (kitschy) music is not exactly the taste of the authors of the film, who come from a different social background from the film's characters. However, a song by Carlos Sukowski, in the style of Roberto Carlos (the most popular Brazilian singer and composer), plays at a revealing moment, moving the characters deeply and nearly effecting a reconciliation: from the street comes the sound of the song playing on the radio of a car, from which a young man calls his girlfriend. Moved probably by the memory of his own past with Dalva, Vítor starts to shake in the rhythm of the music, to sing along; he approaches Dalva from behind and folds his arms around her and, for some seconds, he dances with her. During this scene, there is no reverse shot showing the outside of the house. The confinement of the characters is complete and, if there is a realistic effect, this is due to the patience of the camera in describing individual behaviours without giving any opinion. Of course, underground cinema, especially that of Sganzerla, had already explored a similar kitsch in São Paulo, in the so-called 'boca do lixo' ('garbage mouth', or the prostitution zone), with their sentimental singers and songs, their bad taste icons, their uncultivated and mixed religiosity. In Sganzerla's films, however, there were permanently distancing elements - irony, escracho (a deeply sarcastic attitude), the self-awareness of decadence, elements, in short, of a critical-political character. In the case of Starry Sky, one cannot speak of irony: the way these kitschy icons are treated is serious, no attempt is made to ridicule or condemn them. We are, therefore, faced with something which is the opposite of the metaphysical camera of Cinema Novo, that used to fly over sertões and seas, in search of the reasons for human misery and pointing to the ways of redemption. The camera in Starry Sky is a perplexed spectator, enclosed within the four walls of a house, ignorant of the reasons that move the characters and patiently waiting for them to be revealed. Throughout the film there is ambiguity about everything. And when in the end, but only after the final credits, the objective point of view is shown through the eyes of a TV camera, we have a totally different view of the facts. We see Dalva as a passive and fearful victim, when actually she was a decisive agent in the events. In this way, the 'reporter spirit', so typical of the new waves of the 60's all over the world and very much developed in the underground cinema of São Paulo (particularly in O bandido da luz vermelha/Red Light Bandit, by Sganzerla, Brazil, 1968), is denied as a truthful vehicle for reality. Reality now does not emerge from criticism, but from pure observation. At least this is what Starry Sky and other recent Brazilian films suggest. I would like to thank Stephen Shennan for his advice and help. Lúcia Nagib is assistant professor at State University of Campinas and Catholic University of São Paulo. She is the author of Werner Herzog - o cinema como realidade (Estação Liberdade), Em torno da 'nouvelle vague' japonesa (Editora da Unicamp) and Nascido das cinzas - autor e sujeito nos filmes de Oshima (Edusp). Notes This article was written in early 1998 and therefore does not mention any of several films made after that which would be relevant to the arguments developed here. 1. Federal Law number 8.685, modified by Provisional Measure 1515, allows a tax rebate for those who buy shares in films under production. The limit of the rebate is 3% for legal persons and 5% for private persons of the income tax. The limit of investment for each project is R$ 3 million. To come under the law, the projects need to be approved by a commission of the Secretary for the Development of the Audiovisual in Brasília. 2. The film was finally released in 2000 with the title Bossa Nova. 3. Cangaceiros: outlaws of the northeastern backlands of Brazil, who became particularly important during the 1930s. 4. Lampião's self-consciousness about his looks had already been noted in an article by José Humberto Dias, who describes Lampião's arrival in Juazeiro do Norte thus: 'Wearing gilded spectacles, a felt hat, leather alpercata shoes, a green scarf around his neck held by a diamond ring, six rings of precious stones on his fingers, a pistol and a 48cm long dagger, Lampião parades off around town, giving interviews and posing for the photographers Pedro Maia and Lauro Cabral.' See 'Benjamin Abrahão, o mascate que filmou Lampião' in Cadernos de pesquisa n 1 Belo Horizonte CPCB/Embrafilme (1984: 25-38). 5. Timbalada, olodum and pagode are recent developments of African-Brazilian music, all of them extremely commercial. 6. The backlands of Brazil. 7. See Helena Salem, interview with Rosemberg Cariry 'Amor de cangaceiro volta ao cinema nacional' in O Estado de S. Paulo, Caderno 2, 7.3.96 : 1. 8. See interview given to Jurandir Freire Costa 'Um filme contra o Brasil indiferente' in Folha de S Paulo 29.3.98: 5-7. 9. From the press release of Baile perfumado/Perfumed Ball 10. See 'Central do Brasil e as cartas na gaveta' in Ilustrada, Folha de S Paulo 27.4.98: 5/8. 11. Site of the settlement of Antonio Conselheiro and his followers, where the famous war of Canudos took place in the first years of this century. 12. See Helena Salem, note 6. 13. See journal Estudos de cinema 1, n 1, Educ: 34. 14. See journal Cinemais, n 3, Jan/Feb 1997: 83. References Bernadet, Jean-Claude (1967) Brasil em tempo de cinema Rio: Civilização Brasileira. Bosi, Alfredo (1992) Dialética da colonização São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Chauo, Marilena (1989) Cultura e democracia São Paulo: Cortez. Jameson, Frederic (1995) As marcas do visível Rio: Graal. Johnson, Randal (1982) Literatura e cinema - Macunaíma: do modernismo na literatura ao cinema novo São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz. Stam, Robert (ed) (1995) Brazilian cinema (expanded edition) Columbia University Press: Rocha, Glauber (1981) Revolução do Cinema Novo Rio: Alhambra/Embrafilme. Rosa, João Guimarães (1986) Grande sertão: veredas Rio: Nova Fronteira. Schwarz, Roberto (1987) Que horas são? São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Tatit, Luiz (1998) 'A cumplicidade do público' in: Mais!, Folha de S Paulo, April 12: 5. Xavier, Ismail (1993) Alegorias do subdesenvolvimento São Paulo: Brasiliense. |
