Straub + RKO

99 River Street

Fredric Brown encontra Jacques Rivette - o que de certa forma remete ao recém visto A Double Life, do Cukor.

PREÇO DA SOLIDÃO, O (THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS) EUA-1972 • De: Paul Newman • Com: Joanne Woodward, Nell Potts • 101´ • C • SR • CP: Livre. A difícil vida de Beatrice, uma jovem viúva com duas filhas para criar. TCL Dia 29 às 20h05 – dia 31 às 11h45

Primeiro, houve Glauber; depois, Rogério

INÁCIO ARAUJO
crítico da Folha

Primeiro, houve Glauber. Depois, Rogério. Os maiores talentos que o cinema brasileiro produziu no sonoro. Glauber foi o Moisés que atravessou o deserto da indiferença crítica e levou o cinema brasileiro ao que considerava o início de sua história. Foi um nacionalista à moda clássica.

Rogério chegou depois, em 1968, com o regime militar se fechando e em plena redescoberta de Oswald de Andrade e sua antropofagia. Se Glauber sentia intensamente a necessidade de mostrar o Brasil, Rogério sentia a necessidade de mostrar cinema. (Inútil dizer: para Rogério existir, era preciso que Glauber, o pai, tivesse existido antes). Não era mais Rossellini que lhe interessava, mas Orson Welles, Godard.

Assim era "O Bandido da Luz Vermelha": Godard, Welles. Mais o rádio, as manchetes de jornais, a Boca do Lixo, o Brasil berrante e aberrante que se consubstanciava na nova metrópole, São Paulo. Em vez da política, obsessão glauberiana, o banditismo, a revolta inútil, desesperada contra uma vida que, sabe-se, não vai mudar.

E o "Bandido" era um filme de ação. Feito para encher cinemas e cair no gosto do público, o que aliás aconteceu. Mas o Brasil já vivia o fechamento político. O pessimismo que o "Bandido" anunciava agora tinha tudo para se consolidar. Rogério acabou, depois de "A Mulher de Todos", construindo uma obra quase inteira no negativo.

No centro dela, sua obsessão: a frustrada passagem de Welles pelo Brasil, espécie de prova de nossa impossibilidade histórica de chegar a qualquer coisa ou lugar. Glauber curtia o Terceiro Mundo, que queria afirmar. Rogério achava isso o fim da picada: "O Terceiro Mundo vai explodir", dizia um anão histérico do "Bandido".

Deve-se dar atenção a Ivan Cardoso, para quem por muitos anos, no Rio, a obra de Rogério acabou permanecendo à sombra da do amigo Júlio Bressane. Ao retornar a São Paulo, e ao reencontrar o montador Silvio Renoldi ("Bandido"), sua obra passa por um último e magnífico florescimento, representado por "É Tudo Verdade" e "O Signo do Caos".

Este último, obsessivo, repetitivo, debate-se com a impossibilidade de mostrar --resultante da frustração de Orson Welles. Como se "That's All True", o filme brasileiro de Welles, nunca concluído, fosse o signo de nossos fracassos, e das políticas cinematográficas criadas para alimentar mediocridades, negócios cinematográficos --mas não cinema.

"Você ainda não viu nada! Nem vai ver!" é o achado amargo deste filme dotado de uma radicalidade que nem o público, nem o "establishment" parecem, hoje, interessados em cultivar. Mas nem por um isso um filme menos notável e um fecho de trajetória digno do grande cineasta Rogério Sganzerla.

A Transparent Parable

by Gérard Legrand

The film Hercules Conquers Atlantis poses a complex question. We have to deal with the "rescue" of a paganistic story under the cover of a transparent parable that wants to "demystify" one of the few myths entirely belonging to the 20th century.

I would like to make myself clear: Plato did not invent the myth of Atlantis out of the blue. In contrast to what the "broad public" and many "naives" - more or less interested in his work - think, Plato was the one who shaped and humanised the older and undefined outlines of the myth. Some of these are a reminiscence of the last prehistoric catastrophes, a confusion between the name of Titan Atlas and the name of a mountain that roamed almost everywhere before stabilising in North Africa, legends about the ancient owners of the Mediterranean and their "orphic" lifestyle; the whole, beautified by an eccentric choice from the body of the mythical nomenclature. However, all these together would not be sufficient to form the allegory Plato wanted, if it were not for "Egypt" (known as the "wonderland" of ancient times) and the relative luxury of the fanciful "precision", which flourished by the salon - explorers and the invincible divers (without having the least idea of Platonic philosophy).

We took pains to find all the places where the later geographers located Atlantis; these places cover the whole planet, including Spitzburg and Oceania. Even "magic" participated in the story: some American sects trying to find a Gospel purified of any Judaic elements and, later, the Nazis, commenced an insane trend for the search of the citizens of Atlantis. Was this nostalgia for the lost paradise and the nation of the chosen ones? On the eve of the Second World War, the myth of Atlantis dominated and had spread, like a contagious disease, over this civilisation; a civilisation supporting progress and excessive modernism. The only thing the myth did was to discover some laughable archaeological scrolls.

Hercules in Conquest is even more spectacular than the one of Revenge as he destroys everything.1 He may not care for the fight in the tavern but he, his son and his friend, the King of Thebes, fight over a dancer. However, Hercules arrested together with the King, stands alone in front of the red light threatening to destroy life. He continues to sleep until the momentΙ I will not to refer to all the beautiful scenes comprising this Atlantis; an Atlantis of much higher quality than the one George Pal haphazardly put together 2 or the one Edgar Ulmer 3 ostentatiously tried to modernise. The denunciation of the "blond superhuman" race, the fascist robots without eyes and the denunciation of the slave crowds who only know to attack their masters, without a strategic plan, and end up slaughtered - these two observations, although utterly pessimistic, shatter the crypto-Hitlerite Atlantis (that of the film Morning of the Magicians) which is later annihilated by beautiful images of volcanoes, scenes borrowed from Haroun Tazieff's documentaries. The masochistic Atlantis by Pierre Benoît has nothing to say to defend itself. Antinea (Fay Spain) who trafficks drugs and secret nuclear weapons will be defeated by her daughter (the wonderful Laura Altan) and Hercules, who, having defeated Proteus, in a Nietzschean tone says: "We, the other Greeks, love nature as it was delivered to us by Gods: benevolent and frightening at the same, harsh and very sweet."

According to its creator, Hercules Conquers Atlantis is the result of a liberal spirit based on the philosophy of comics. This film is the most balanced and elegant, in terms of the writing, peplum I know. It is an extremely beautiful film although one cannot clearly find many surprising elements, typical of the director's earlier "little films". One may wonder if Cottafavi lost some of his inspiration when demystifying the hero fighting injustice and the lost continent. I refuse to believe that we can possibly be so clever any longer. However, perhaps, in this case, the real culprit is the rhythm of the "chronicle"; a genre that does not favour difficult situations.

"Positif", issue no. 50-52, March 1963.

1 Reference to Cottafavi's previous film The Revenge of Hercules (1960)
2 Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961)
3 L'Atlantide (1960), modern remake of Pabst's film (1932) which was also a remake of a Jacques Feyder's film (1921) - all based on Pierre Benoît's exotic novel.

KILLING IN STYLE.

Reflections about the Giallo

http://killinginstyle.blogspot.com/