Journalist Aaron Cutler has written an
interesting article about the musical-comedy-films made mainly in Rio de
Janeiro in the 1940s and 1950s the so-called CHANCHADA aka Schweinerein meaning
ribaldry. Here's the article published on 30 October 2011.
How many readers have heard of Atlântida Cinematográfica? The studio opened in
Rio de Janeiro in 1941, and grew popular over the next two decades for its
stream of musical comedy films called quaintly chanchadas (ribaldry). These were light,
exciting black-and-white musical comedies, often Hollywood parodies. At its
height, Atlântida would put out five a year using the same small group of
directors and actors. Don't think of them as cheap rush jobs, though. On the
contrary, these well-made movies are joys.
This becomes clear from one of the first shots of
Atlântida founder-producer-director José Carlos Burle's 1953 film Carnaval Atlântida, one of
three chanchadas I watched Thursday in good Cinemateca
Brasileira prints.
(A fourth, 'Sputnik Man', also screened.) The camera moves toward a door with
the name "Cecílio B. De Milho" on it, and we see the growling,
pacing, cigar-chomping studio boss (Renato Restier) inside. He's making an epic
about the Trojan War. He needs box office, baby, and he needs a star to get it,
but against his better judgment goes with two unknowns. The first, a moon-eyed,
mustachioed, bow-tied fop (José
Lewgoy), is enlisted to play Paris. The second,
meek Professor Xenofontes (Oscarito), teaches classical history at a girls' school, and
is thus the best possible person to play Helen of Troy. Yet when it comes time
to shoot, our leads refuse to kiss each other, wrestling each other to the
ground instead, and destroying fake palm trees as they do.
The rubber-faced Oscarito (real name Oscar Lorenzo Jacinto de la
Imaculada Concepción Teresa Diaz) was a frequent Atlântida lead. His flailing arm movements inside a box he seems to
have drawn around himself recall Chaplin's gestures; his leaping mouth and eyebrows, set into scared commotion by women, call to
mind Jerry Lewis's. Yet he's closer to Frank Tashlin's Lewis than to the one
Lewis directed himself, an agent of chaos who nonetheless belongs within
society. In 'Carnaval Atlantida's show-stopping song-and-dance finale,
he stands at the front of a large group, with a lovely lady holding him. He's
pressed a little closer than he'd probably prefer, but still seems like he's
having a wonderful time.
"Why do you have to do a serious Helen of Troy
movie? Why can't you make a musical?" someone asks De Milho. He does, and
the film we're watching follows suit, its last 15 minutes an extended
stand-alone number as in 1951's 'An American in Paris'. Yet while the
sequence in the Hollywood film is a character's fantasy, the chanchada makes no such pretense; 'Carnaval
Atlantida' works more like Hollywood's earlier backstage musicals, in which
the show is the group's way of continuing to have fun.
Another important group member is a tiny black
actor-singer-dancer, Sebastião
Bernardes de Souza Prata, who went by the stage name of Grande Otelo. In blessed contrast to Hollywood's racial divisions,
Grande Otelo's skin color was basically a nonissue on screen, and he often
teamed with Oscarito to form a lively comic pair. In 'Carnaval Atlantida',
he plays a mischievous, false-beard-wearing clown who locks Oscarito's
professor inside a steam bath; in 1954's 'Matar ou correr' (Kill or run), a 'High Noon',
he plays deputy Cisco Kada to Kid Bolha, Oscarito's cowardly sheriff. Kada tries
to shove the Kid onto a horse, and gets trapped between the other man's legs in
the process; once they untangle, he excitedly fires gunshots into the air,
which scares the horse into riding out of control.
Like in the 1952 Fred
Zinneman film, the sheriff
here waits to confront a bandit (José Lewgoy again) that he once locked up.
Unlike the still, sweating Gary Cooper, though, Oscarito throws his hands all
over himself, and eats as much paper as possible to try to keep calm. 'Matar ou
correr's message also differs from its predecessor's; while Cooper's tin
star must face the villains alone, Oscarito's learns that no man is an island.
In 'High Noon', Grace Kelly learns, looking forward, that you sometimes must
shoot people; 'Kill or run's female lead (Inalda de Carvalho) blasts at
bad guys repeatedly, turning her head each time she fires, then looking back
with a smile to see what she's hit.
To show the theme of group solidarity, director Carlos Manga (promoted after directing 'Carnaval Atlantida's
musical sequences) arranges his group shots elegantly and beautifully, placing
people at different, overlapping points throughout the frame to give a sense of depth of field. The
cowboys address each other at
angles, roaming throughout the bar or jail space while drinking, the
details of guns, farm tools, and bits of everyday life kept in focus behind
them the whole time. This is very different from 'High Noon', which prefers
one- or two-shots and frames people talking in straight lines. Its style is
closer to that of Howard Hawks's 'Rio Bravo', a great response to 'High
Noon', even more impressive for doing what Hawks did five years earlier.
A key western staple is the climactic gunfight, in which the hero duels the villain and proves his
courage. 'Matar ou correr' feels no need to prove this; the Kid is
a hero in spite of himself, and in fumbling for his gun accidentally shoots the
bad guy in the hand. He can then be fully happy in the community where he
belongs. In contrast to the rigorously ordered social codes of many westerns,
with people ordered along lines of race, class, and sex, everyone celebrates
together in 'Kill or run' with a carnival spirit. The ending even spots
up the western's implicit homoeroticism, as Cisco and the Kid see an amorous
couple and, overjoyed, start making out.
Oscarito appears Otelo-less in the same year's 'Nem Sansão, nem Dalila' ('Neither Samsom nor Delilah', which Manga also
directed. The film's first 10 minutes could be called 'Barbershop madness', as Oscarito's scrawny
shaver lifts the wig off of a big, burly, bald client who in his outraged
vanity proceeds to wreck the place. The little fellow drives away, and crashes
into a house where a scientist has built a time machine, hurtling him back to
ancient times. He has held onto the wig, which now gives him super strength;
he's found the power to impress people, and political candidacy follows. He
strides beneath a banner proclaiming "Samson - Man of Action,"
dictating to his secretary as she writes with hammer and chisel. The campaign
plans real progress for its backward constituency; its leader cries out,
"I'm going to make a film industry, and only one state bank!"
Like a lot of contemporaneous Hollywood comedies
(including the best Tashlin-Lewis film, 'Artists and Models', 'Neither
Samson nor Delilah' eventually turns into an action movie. Each person
and object gets the chance to cause a little havoc, including the hero's jeep,
which returns to send a gigantic, solemn statue crashing into frame. Manga
organizes the destruction through clean framing and editing, which makes it
funnier. It's almost needless to say that this film is better than any of the Biblical epics it sends up, just as 'Carnaval Atlantida's musical looks better than its Trojan tripe. But I'd go even further, and call Manga a case for further study; more films
could show him to be as gifted a comic filmmaker as the best American clowners of the 1950s and 1960s
(Tashlin, Blake Edwards,
and Billy Wilder).
These three films were the first Atlântida films I'd
seen, and first chanchadas.
(A sex-heavy variant called pornochanchada emerged in the 1970s.)
I'd like to see many more, including Manga-Oscarito pairings like 1953's 'Double the noise' (A dupla do barulho), 1955's 'War on Samba' ('Guerra ao samba'), 1956's 'Sprouts College' (Colégio de brotos), 1959's 'This is my million' (Esse milhão é meu), and 1957's 'De vento em pop' (translated, this 1957 prizewinner might be 'In
full swing').
Though well-known and beloved in Brazil, these films sorely need greater
international exposure. Film historians, programmers, and critics can get so
caught up in researching the American studio system that they don't realize
other national cinemas not just studied and imitated Hollywood filmmaking, but
did it better.
The Sao Paulo International Film Festival
run as of 3rd November 2011.
'Carnaval Atlantida', 'Kill or run' (Matar ou correr) and 'Neither Samson nor Delilah' (Nem Sansão, nem Dalila). Sao Paulo International Film Festival 2011.
