Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia Lisa Shaw (bio) Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia, by Lúcia Nagib. I. B. Tauris 2007. $75.00 hardcover; $28.95 paper. 200 pages The focus of this book is the reemergence of ideas of utopia in cinema of the so-called retomada—the renaissance of Brazilian filmmaking that began in the mid-1990s. Nagib contextualizes this recent trend within utopian traditions in Brazil’s cinematic past, considering how these were in turn inspired by the nation’s foundational myths. She thus gives due attention to the pioneering, avant-garde Cinema Novo movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, and to how film production of the retomada era transcends [End Page 169] that movement’s national project, engaging instead with modern, postmodern, and commercial cinemas worldwide, “thus benefiting from and contributing to a new transnational cinematic aesthetics.”1 Nagib’s overarching thesis is that notions of utopia that were lost in the past of Cinema Novo have resurfaced in Brazilian films produced since the mid-1990s as a reflection of the renewed optimism and belief in the viability of the nation prompted by the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and his introduction of neoliberal reforms. It is the author’s contention, however, that this new utopia on screen has been thwarted by a further trend toward cinematic realism that continues to suggest that the country’s historical ills are still very much in evidence. The opening chapter introduces the dialectic matrix of utopia and anti-utopia that was established by Glauber Rocha, the pioneering Cinema Novo filmmaker, in the films he made immediately before and after the military coup that took place in Brazil in 1964. It takes as its point of departure images of the sea in Rocha’s work, particularly Black God, White Devil (Deus eo Diablo na terra do sol; 1964) and Land in Anguish (Terra em Transe; 1967), excavating the foundations of his maritime imagery and examining how these iconic visual tropes are reworked in recent Brazilian films such as Foreign Land (Terra estrangeira; Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995), Perfumed Ball (Baile perfumado; Lírio Ferreira and Paulo Caldas, 1997) and Behind the Sun (Abril despedaçado; Walter Salles, 2001). Nagib argues that it is precisely the complexity and richness of Rocha’s sea imagery, which was inspired in turn by François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups; 1959), that has led it to become the main source of utopian motifs for such retomada films. The author’s impressive command of film history and theory enables her to make such transnational connections throughout the book, thus offering new insight into the cross-fertilization that occurred between New Wave movements across the globe. Indeed, this is one of this study’s major contributions to scholarship. Chapter 2 turns its attention to two further films directed by Walter Salles, Central Station (1998) and Midnight (codirected with Daniela Thomas, 1999), as well as Toni Venturi’s Latitude Zero (2000). The theoretical focus is on how these films engage with a key concept of New Wave cinemas across the world, not least New German Cinema, namely, the idea of recommencing from zero. Although by no means aesthetically radical, these three recent films reference moments of radicalism in Cinema Novo. With regard to the aesthetic choices of Central Station, Nagib engages with critic Ivana Bentes’s oft-cited concept of the “cosmetics of hunger,” as opposed to Glauber Rocha’s “aesthetics of hunger.” But Nagib also explores the film’s connections with Cinema Novo at a deeper level, drawing on her command of Brazilian film history to reveal important citations. In her third chapter, she analyzes the myth of cannibalism as it has evolved in Brazilian cinema and its relationship with ideas of national identity and utopia. She focuses on two films of the Cinema Novo movement, Macunaíma (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1969) and How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Como era gostoso o meo Frances; Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1971), and one of the retomada, namely, Hans Staden (Luiz Alberto Pereira, 1999). Nagib concludes that although all three films focus on...