After starting in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, French Novelle Vague soon spilled over European borders and jumped continents as youthful cineasts took it up as their own under various names. In Brazil, dubbed Cinema Novo, it likely began with this ambitious film from 25-yr-old writer/director Glauber Rocha. Crossing more disciplinary lines than a professor at an understaffed Mid-West Liberal Arts college, there’s populist impulse, Leftish agenda, folklorist embrace, religious fervour and Spaghetti Western nihilism roiling the texture and bubbling under the surface of this episodic tale of woe, an unpicturesque picaresque that roams Brazil’s scrubby/water-starved NorthEast plains from some timeless past. 1830s? 1930? It starts splendidly as a desperate peasant refuses to let a cattle & land grande screw him out of his pay and take a beating, instead pulling out a blade, killing the capitalist and taking to the road for the rest of the film; on the lam in various allegorical hats of trade, revolution, religious penitent, commune seeker, all coming to grief with wife in tow. Roche alternating between grubby, magic, and Neo-Realism, all failing in one way or another. The themes absolute catnip for Academic types looking for topics to write on, but cumulatively indigestible as film fare in spite of its influence and cultural importance. Those not enrolled in the class may not see the need to finish the homework assignment.
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