![]() Satan repeatedly tempts Simon to come down from his pedestal, including once in the guise of a topless Silvia Pinal (which is worth the price of admission alone). In one of Luis Bunuel’s wackiest tall tales, the title character decides to live atop a giant column in the middle of the desert in order to be nearer to God and to avoid the worldly temptations. Simon of the Desert (Bunuel, Mexico, 1965) Plotless and meandering on the surface, this is actually political filmmaking of the most powerful and vital kind. Once there, he goes skinny dipping, spies on a prostitute, witnesses the accidental death of a friend, smokes countless cigarettes and has an unforgettably poetic interaction with a horse-drawn carriage, all in the course of one long day before being re-captured. As in Italian Neorealism, this features an incredible child performance by Diego Puente as Polin, an eleven year old boy who escapes from a state-run orphanage and runs away to the city. As a political statement though, it is arguably more effective than its predecessors because it was actually produced in an “authoritarian-bureaucratic state,” which responded by promptly banning the film. Like an Argentinian version of Zero de Conduite or The 400 Blows, Leonardo Favio’s first feature uses the microcosmic story of mistreated children rebelling against the adult world (school teachers, parents, police) as an allegory for friction between individuals and society as a whole. An excellent example of how politically-committed filmmakers used cinema to engage socio-political problems as Marxism swept across Latin American in the mid-twentieth century.Ĭhronicle of a Boy Alone (Favio, Argentina, 1965) Hunting all of these characters is the government-and-church appointed assassin Antonio das Mortes, who gives the film dramatic shape and allows it to build to an awe-inspiring climax. Unlike his compatriot Nelson Pereira dos Santos however, Rocha is not content to portray this conflict in a simple Neorealist style instead, he sends Manuel, his protagonist, on a picaresque, occasionally hallucinatory journey where he first falls under the sway of a self-appointed religious prophet named Sebastião (the “black God” of the title) and later a charismatic proletarian bandit named Corisco (who christens our hero “Satan”). Glauber Rocha’s international breakthrough begins roughly where Vidas Secas ended: with a poor laborer living in the harsh landscape of northeastern Brazil being cheated out of his wages by an exploitative boss. Defying all social norms of the time, he makes the ex-slave his official concubine, publicly assuming their relationship and showering her with riches.Below is part two of the classic Latin American cinema primer that I began last week.īlack God, White Devil (Rocha, Brazil, 1964) ![]() After their first night of love and many arguments with Violante, the Commander breaks the engagement and decides to confess his love for Xica in public and gives her his letter of freedom. This sharpens João's passion even more, and moved by Xica's beauty, he decides to wait for her to seek him out himself. The slave is sent to the Commander, but refuses to sleep with him. ![]() Xica meets the new commander appointed by the king, João Fernandes de OliveiraĪt Violante and João's engagement party, Sergeant Major Tomaz Cabral, immersed in the happiness of being able to marry his daughter, encourages the commander to ask for anything he would like as a gift, to which he replies that he loves Xica. Xica and Quiloa, a man in love with her, decide to bury the trunk in order to later have enough money to buy their freedom cards. When the Commander decides to sell his young slave Xica to a brothel, the young woman takes revenge by stealing a chest of diamonds. The Commander Felisberto Caldeira D'Abrantes, charged by the king to manage the diamond mines of Arraial del Tijuco, dominates the territory. In the 18th century, during the reign of José I of Portugal, the city of Tijuco, located in Minas Gerais, lived the fever of collecting diamonds, which were sent to enrich the Kingdom of Portugal. ![]()
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