BAMcinématek: The Talking Pictures of Manoel de Oliveira
BAMcinématek’s upcoming series, The Talking Pictures of Manoel de Oliveira, runs March 7 – 30. This retrospective of features and shorts marks the centennial of the acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker, and includes early documentaries and recent dramatic features. We are happy to announce that Oliveira will be at BAM on the opening night of the series, March 7, for a rare question-and-answer following the screening of his most recent film, Christopher Columbus, The Enigma (Cristóvão Colombo—O Enigma) (2007).
Other highlights include Oliveira’s first feature, Aniki Bóbó (1942), a portrait of childhood; The Past and the Present (O Passado e o Presente) (1971), the stunning first film in Oliveira’s epic Tetralogy of Love; the scathingly hilarious satire The Cannibals (Os Canibais) (1988); the poignant meditation on loss, I’m Going Home (Je rentre à la maison), starring Michel Piccoli and John Malkovich; and Voyage to the Beginning of the World (Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo) (1997), featuring Marcello Mastroianni in his final role as the director of a touring troupe of actors.
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Complete Program: The Talking Pictures of Manoel de Oliveira, March 7 – 30
Born in 1908, Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira inevitably has his age mentioned whenever a film of his is shown. But consider this: since 1990, Oliveira has made a film per year, increasing his productivity and his creativity as he gets older. Oliveira delivers sublimely crafted works rooted in the European literary tradition of Goethe, Flaubert, and Ionesco, along with adaptations of Portuguese writers, while using his self-reflexive style to challenge the nature of cinema itself. Grandly defying the idea that movies should be less talky and more visual, Oliveira removes the flash and melodrama from his work to focus on words and the ideas they convey. We’re proud to celebrate Oliveria’s centennial with this retrospective, ranging from his earliest documentary works to his most recent triumphs. This retrospective, organized by BAMcinématek’s with the collaboration of Antonio Pedroso, will tour the US in 2008. All films directed by Manoel de Oliveira and in Portuguese with English subtitles unless otherwise noted.
Aniki Bóbó (1942) 70 min
Fri, Mar 7 at 4:30, 9:30 PM
Oliveira’s first feature was made during the Estada Novo period, where political dissent was forbidden. So while it shows only the beginnings of his constant intellectual probing, it is a remarkably enjoyable tale of three children’s lives in Porto. As they play along the Douro River, a tale of adolescent romance and jealousy emerges. Shot almost entirely on location, the film seamlessly combines neo-realism with a heightened sense of fantasy that puts the film entirely in the children’s perspective.
“Much simpler in style and more approachable than many of De Oliveira’s later films, it has excellent location photography and natural performances from the kids.”—Channel 4 Film
Christopher Columbus, The Enigma (Cristóvão Colombo—O Enigma) (2007) 70 min
Fri, Mar 7 at 7 PM *
* Q&A with Manoel de Oliveira
With Ricardo Trepa, Leonor Baldaque
In this piece of “romanticized fiction,” Oliveira recreates the real-life search of Manuel Luciano da Silva and his wife Silvia to prove that Christopher Columbus was actually Portuguese-born. This exploration of ancestry and obsession spans Europe and America from the 1940s to the present day. In an act of sympathy with the da Silvas, Oliveira even casts himself and his wife as the older version of the couple, cheekily tying the past to the present.
“…part literary adaptation, part scholarly romance, part impish exercise in avant-garde nationalism, and altogether enchanting.”—The Village Voice
The Past and the Present (O Passado e o Presente) (1971) 117 min
Sat, Mar 8 at 6:50, 9:30 PM
With Maria de Saisset, Manuela de Freitas
From 1971 – 1981, Oliveira created four films that cemented his reputation in Europe and abroad, which came to be known as the Tetralogy of Frustrated Love, as each film deals obsessively with unrealized or unfulfilled romances. The Past and the Present, only Oliveira’s third feature, shows the beginnings of his love of theatricality and the primacy of the spoken word; the story revolves around a married widow who only loves her husbands after they have died.
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Benilde or the Virgin Mother (Benilde ou a Virgem Mãe) (1975) 106 min
Sun, Mar 9 at 6:50, 9:15 PM
With Maria Amélia Matta, Jorge Rolla
A story of possibly immaculate birth, as a pregnant young woman declares that she has never been with a man, throwing her marriage plans into chaos. Benilde can be considered the first true Oliveira film, as it flaunts its artifice and strictly emphasizes the text of José Régio’s play. With the film’s opening shot, a camera traveling through a soundstage to arrive at the set for the first scene, Oliveira seemingly renounces traditional cinema for good.
“With creamy whites plus richly saturated technicolor, with stormy shadows and leaves swirling, de Oliveira recalls Douglas Sirk’s melodramas…[while] the miracle question suggests both Dreyer’s Ordet and Rossellini’s Il Miracolo (and nudges at Pasolini’s Teorema), but de Oliveira nimbly steps aside just far enough to avoid being pinned down.”—Bright Lights Film Journal
Rite of Spring (Acto de Primavera) (1963) 90 min
Thu, Mar 13 at 6:50, 9:15 PM
With Nicolau Nunes da Silva, Ermelinda Pires
Oliveira’s second feature is an interesting mix of documentary, fiction, and experimental narrative as he explores a local town’s passion play. The play was staged by Oliveira for the cameras, but the town’s annual production is real, resulting in real people acting for the camera, interspersed with scenes of everyday life and experimental montage (including an anti-war sentiment during the crucifixion).
“…midway through the filming, Oliveira found his point-of-view shifting from a sociological detachment to an immediate involvement with the fiction under performance, a shift that would produce the remarkable combination of theatrical ritual and documentary-like distance of his late features.”—Chicago Reader
The Cannibals (Os Canibais) (1988) 99 min
Fri, Mar 14 at 2, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15 PM
With Luís Miguel Cintra, Leonor Silveira, Diogo Dória
The Cannibals is quite simply Oliveira’s most abstract, pointed, and scathingly hilarious film. Using a violinist/narrator who addresses the audience directly, Oliveira shoots this dissection of upper-class values as an opera, complete with mechanical limbs falling off, musical interludes, and, yes, the cannibalism that the title promises. The last ten minutes are an uproarious spectacle that would make even Buñuel envious.
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Doomed Love (Amor de Perdição) (1978)
Sat, Mar 15 at 6:15 PM
With António Sequeira Lope, Cristina Hauser
Inititally made for Portuguese TV, Doomed Love was a ratings failure until its release as a mammoth theatrical feature allowed audiences to appreciate the details of Oliveira’s theatrical mise-en-scène and narration on the big screen. Since then, this tale of lovers kept apart by their families in nineteenth-century high society has taken its place as one of the masterpieces of 1970s European cinema.
“[A] striking, eccentric film that finds its meaning in the rupture between a 20th-century medium and an antique rhetoric, measuring the passage of time through the modulations of human thought.”—Chicago Reader
Francisca (1981) 166 min
Sun, Mar 16 at 3, 7 PM
With Teresa Menezes, Diogo Dória
Based on true events, Francisca tells the story of a wealthy but bored young man who woos a virtuous young woman to his country estate, but then virtually abandons her. The final film in Oliveira’s Tetralogy of Frustrated Love, Francisca pushes Oliveira’s concept of theatricality in cinema as far as it can go without actually breaking through the fourth wall, resulting in a dreamlike film full of addresses to the camera and highly stylized acting.
“Using a series of tableaux to illustrate the pre-industrial setting and pace of life, so different from today’s, Oliveira sets the scene for the main protagonists to act out their individual dramas.”—Channel 4 Film
Oliveira Shorts Program
Wed, Mar 19 at 6:50, 9:15 PM
This collection of short films all date prior to Oliveira’s modern period. They offer fascinating glimpses of the master filmmaker grappling with his own personal style, including the expressionistic The Painter and the City (Pintor e a cidade) (1956), the social documentary O Pão (1964), the conceptual My Brother Julio’s Paintings (As Pinturas do meu irmão Júlio) (1965) and his early masterpiece, the abstract, urban tone-poem Working on the River Douro (Douro, Faina Fluvial) (1931).
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‘Non’, or the Vain Glory of Command (‘Non’, ou A Vã Glória de Mandar) (1990) 111 min
Thu, Mar 20 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15 PM
With Luís Miguel Cintra, Diogo Dória
“What are we doing here,” asks a soldier at the beginning of the film, but it might well stand in for Oliveira himself. This film, one of Oliveira’s most epic, recounts in flashback some of Portugal’s most famous military battles and defeats, while examining the travels of a group of soldiers through Angola. The meticulous recreation of battles both historical and mythical is a wonder to behold. In Portuguese and Spanish with English subtitles.
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The Divine Comedy (A Divina Comédia) (1991) 140 min
Fri, Mar 21 at 3, 6, 9 PM
With Maria de Medeiros, Leonor Silveira
Instead of offering a take on Dante, Oliveira instead tackles the whole of Western civilization by focusing on a group of mental patients in a palatial asylum. Each assumes himself or herself to be a figure from a literary work (or sometimes more than one), and as the scenes unfold, Adam and Eve meet figures from Dostoyevsky while Nietzsche looks on.
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The Convent (O Convento) (1995) 93 min
Sat, Mar 22 at 6:50, 9:15 PM
With Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich
The Convent starts from the conceit of having Malkovich and wife Deneuve investigate his idea that Shakespeare was actually Spanish-born. From there, the movie evolves into metaphysical notions of good and evil and elements of Catholicism and Faust into an eerie, mythic film. This marks the first pairing of Oliveira with Malkovich, who would work together again in several films. In Portuguese, French, and English with English subtitles.
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Abraham’s Valley (Vale Abraão) (1993) 203 min
Sun, Mar 23 at 4, 8 PM
With Leonor Silveira
Leonor Silveira, one of Oliveira’s most frequent on-screen muses, is radiant in this reinterpretation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Silveira plays a beautiful, young woman who marries to please her family but not for love. She eventually takes a lover, much to her husband’s chagrin. The combination of voice-over narration and Oliveira’s black sense of humor make this a sensuous, lyrical treat.
“Not since Diary of a Country Priest, and maybe François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, has narration been used for such curious and exhilarating effect.”—The New York Times
Day of Despair (O Dia do Desespero) (1992) 75 min
Thu, Mar 27 at 7:30, 9:15 PM
With Mário Barroso,Teresa Madruga
Oliveira dramatizes the last days of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco (who wrote the book that Doomed Love was based on), although he does it with plenty of asides and postmodernism (such as when Barroso, playing Branco, introduces himself to the audience). The story concerns the writer going blind and being driven to suicide through ghostly, otherworldly means.
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The Uncertainty Principle (O Princípio da Incerteza) (2002) 132 min
Fri, Mar 28 at 3, 6, 9 PM
With Leonor Baldaque, Leonor Silveira
Using his stock company of actors and collaborators, Oliveira returns to the artifice of his earlier works. On a country estate, the saintly Camila (Baldaque) marries the wealthy Antonio, but the madame of a local brothel (Silveira) soon causes everyone to rethink their relationships in this witty existential commentary.
“…it’s almost impossible to fully process on one viewing… As usual [Oliveira] plays fascinating games with structure, toying with our expectations.”—Senses of Cinema
I’m Going Home (Je rentre à la maison) (2001) 90 min
Sat, Mar 29 at 2, 6:50 PM
With Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich
One of his simplest films and a surprise hit both in Europe and America, I’m Going Home is an exquisite meditation on age, loss, and the simple joys of life. Piccoli plays an aging actor whose family is killed in an accident, leaving only his grandson. As time passes and a new role is offered in a film version of Joyce’s Ulysses (by film director Malkovich), it becomes clear that he has not dealt with his grief. In French and English with English subtitles.
“A surprising work from the Portuguese master of stylization, much more realistic, rather like late Claude Sautet, this extremely well written and impeccably shot study of an elderly actor (Michel Piccoli) who must cope with the accidental deaths of his wife, daughter, and son-in-law has an equilibrium steeped in elderly wisdom.”—Film Comment
Voyage to the Beginning of the World (Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo) (1997) 95 min
Sat, Mar 29 at 4:30, 9:15 PM
With Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Yves Gautier
A troupe of actors, led by Gautier, and an elderly director (Mastroianni) travel to Portugal to visit the land of Gautier’s birth. In this sublime take on aging and the road movie, Oliveira himself appears as the driver, often seen with his onscreen doppelganger. This was also the magnificent Mastroianni’s final role. In Portuguese and French with English subtitles.
“[A]n exquisitely sad and moving reflection on memory and personal roots.”—The New York Times
The Letter (La Lettre) (1999) 107 min
Sun, Mar 30 at 2, 6:50 PM
With Chiara Mastroianni, Pedro Abrunhosa, Leonor Silveira
One of Oliveira’s rare works set in contemporary times, The Letter adapts Madame de Lafayette’s novel The Princess of Clèves to the present day, thereby juxtaposing seventeenth-century morals with a twentieth-century setting. The tale of a young married woman who falls in love (with real-life Portuguese rock star Abrunhosa) but refuses to act, even after her husband’s death, makes us reconsider our own sense of morality.
“[a] raw spiritual allegory of the war between the flesh and spirit”—The New York Times
Inquietude (1998) 110 min
Sun, Mar 30 at 4:30, 9:15 PM
With Leonor Baldaque, Leonor Silveira
Three distinct setpieces, each briefly linked to the other, make up Inquietude. The first is a black comedy where an elderly scientist tries to convince his son to kill himself to become immortal; in the second, a socialite in Porto is unable to attain the love of a flighty woman; the third shows a young woman attempting to find a mythical mother of the river. Look closely at the dance scene in the second segment for Oliveira and his wife Isabel.
“A filmmaker who, in the middle of a film, suddenly passes by dancing a subtle tango is a filmmaker who can permit himself anything.”—Cahiers du Cinéma
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