Another movie I watched from Cinema Novo, this time for the fourth class of the course taught by Prof. Alisson Gutemberg for the Film Analysis Club (Cinema with Theory).
The film is part of the third and final phase of Cinema Novo, when colors and a tone of comedy were adopted by the directors, especially in Como Era Gostoso O Meu Francês and Macunaíma (also the theme of the same class).
How delicious my French was, directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos and it's not an easy film to understand if you don't know a little about the history of Brazil. Most of the dialogues are in the Tupi language (credits to the great filmmaker Humberto Mauro), a language spoken by the Tupiniquim and Tupinambá tribes. There is little speaking in French and Portuguese from Portugal. None of the dialogues have subtitles for Portuguese. Thus, we have to understand what happens on the screens through the images, through what we know about Brazilian history and through the intertitles with excerpts from historical documents signed by Mem de Sá, Hans Staden, among others.
The film's prologue leads us to believe that we will be watching a comedy, as a narrator tells a story, but the scenes we see are completely the opposite of what we see. Something like passing the wrong information, the so-called current fake news, as if it were the truth. But after the prologue is over, the film takes on a documentary air. However, it makes a new reading of what we have learned in history, with the Indians having complete control of the situation and fighting on an equal footing with the Portuguese and French invaders. It has a clear reference to the Modern Art Week of 1922, when the anthropophagic movement was launched. In the film, we have literal anthropophagy, as the tupinambás were cannibals and prepared the French to eat it in commemoration of the victory in the war against the tupiniquins, and metaphorical anthropophagy, which the modernist movement preached, that is, swallowing foreign culture to to create a new culture, totally Brazilian, in the film represented by the French assimilation of habits and customs of the tribe in which he was a prisoner, becoming one of them, walking naked, hunting and even with the same haircut as the other Indians.
It was the first time I saw this movie and I confess that I was a little bored, mainly because I had to listen to a language I don't know, without having a translation. I felt like I was watching a silent film, with intertitles, but with colors and dialogue.
Another point to highlight is the influence of Tropicalismo, a movement that began in the late 1960s, early 1970s, with the appreciation of Brazilian colors and landscapes.
The film is part of the third and final phase of Cinema Novo, when colors and a tone of comedy were adopted by the directors, especially in Como Era Gostoso O Meu Francês and Macunaíma (also the theme of the same class).
How delicious my French was, directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos and it's not an easy film to understand if you don't know a little about the history of Brazil. Most of the dialogues are in the Tupi language (credits to the great filmmaker Humberto Mauro), a language spoken by the Tupiniquim and Tupinambá tribes. There is little speaking in French and Portuguese from Portugal. None of the dialogues have subtitles for Portuguese. Thus, we have to understand what happens on the screens through the images, through what we know about Brazilian history and through the intertitles with excerpts from historical documents signed by Mem de Sá, Hans Staden, among others.
The film's prologue leads us to believe that we will be watching a comedy, as a narrator tells a story, but the scenes we see are completely the opposite of what we see. Something like passing the wrong information, the so-called current fake news, as if it were the truth. But after the prologue is over, the film takes on a documentary air. However, it makes a new reading of what we have learned in history, with the Indians having complete control of the situation and fighting on an equal footing with the Portuguese and French invaders. It has a clear reference to the Modern Art Week of 1922, when the anthropophagic movement was launched. In the film, we have literal anthropophagy, as the tupinambás were cannibals and prepared the French to eat it in commemoration of the victory in the war against the tupiniquins, and metaphorical anthropophagy, which the modernist movement preached, that is, swallowing foreign culture to to create a new culture, totally Brazilian, in the film represented by the French assimilation of habits and customs of the tribe in which he was a prisoner, becoming one of them, walking naked, hunting and even with the same haircut as the other Indians.
It was the first time I saw this movie and I confess that I was a little bored, mainly because I had to listen to a language I don't know, without having a translation. I felt like I was watching a silent film, with intertitles, but with colors and dialogue.
Another point to highlight is the influence of Tropicalismo, a movement that began in the late 1960s, early 1970s, with the appreciation of Brazilian colors and landscapes.