O Pai Tirano is one of those films that integrate the collective imagination of Portugal and, therefore, is part of the national cultural heritage.
There is practically no Portuguese person who has not seen it, probably several times, and who does not know the main characters and actors in its plot.
And the most fantastic thing is that the film was already old when I saw it for the first time, and fell in love with it, with that charm passed on to subsequent generations, who continue to admire and enjoy it, as if it were a work of their own time. After all, humor and love are timeless.
In addition to having a very well-written script, in partnership between the Ribeiro brothers and Vasco Santana, that is, between the director and the two main actors of the farce, who thus centralize, in the trio, the entire direction of the project, this is a comedy with feet firmly on the ground.
I mean by this to say that, without actually having a social conscience (which the Estado Novo would certainly censure, neither were expected from António Lopes Ribeiro, the man who filmed A Revolução de Maio, challenges to Salazarist power), it also does not embark on fantasies, be it wealth, nobility or even progress or fashionable patriotism.
It is a story of simple people, sales clerks who live in a boarding house in Lisbon, who dispute the old-fashioned taste for the theater drama with the modernity of cinema, and where platonic and dramatic love is opposed to the modernist and self-interested fascination, imported from the Hollywood movies.
But it is also a film for simple people, who see themselves in the characters and the plot, who recognize the filming locations in downtown Lisbon, who have fun with well-written puns, in the best national theatrical tradition.
It is clear that, for the power of that time, it was important to show this image of normality in Portugal, when the world was at war and the difficulties were tremendous, throughout Europe. But that political message lost meaning over time. Today, no one remembers that the film takes place during the Second World War, since not a single mention of the conflict appears throughout the work.
What remains of O Pai Tirano is a picturesque and very convincing portrait of a time gone by, when life was simpler, and people lived with joy, love, worked and did amateur theater and went to the movies, and above all, where the individual was more integrated socially, in the family, among the boarders who shared the residence with him, the work colleagues, who had amateur theater groups and spent time together, outside working hours, even at shared lunches, at the viewpoint of Santa Catarina, between lovers.
What enchants the contemporary spectator is the brilliant and funny writing and interpretations, that show a nostalgic vision of a past, presented to us as simple as it is remote.
Of course it is a pure illusion, but what does it matter? That's cinema.
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