By JOSÉ GERALDO COUTO*
Commentary on the recently released posthumous book by Carlos Drummond de Andrade
For those who like poetry and cinema (who doesn't?), a precious volume has just arrived in bookstores: Cinema up close, which brings together texts in prose and verse by Carlos Drummond de Andrade dedicated to the subject.
Organized by Pedro Augusto Graña Drummond, the poet's grandson, and by the editor and writer Rodrigo Lacerda, the book features chronicles and poems published between 1920 and 1986, that is, from the author's 18th to 84th birthdays. More than six decades, therefore, of an erratic but intense relationship with the art of moving shadows. During this long period, cinema changed, the world changed, and the poet changed. But the passion persisted.
Unusual spectator
The reader should not expect in-depth reflections on the language or history of cinema. Unlike colleagues such as Vinícius de Moraes and José Lino Grünewald, or even Caetano Veloso, Carlos Drummond de Andrade was not a critic who thought systematically about authors, styles, or cinematographies. His relationship with the medium was essentially that of a spectator among others. He did not even see himself as a cinephile, but as a “cinema buff.”
It turns out that he was not an ordinary spectator, because he was not an ordinary man. His experience with cinema is filtered by a unique experience, sensitivity and intelligence – and this is what the texts in the book bring to light.
Greta Garbo and Charles Chaplin
On the one hand, there is a celebration that is both passionate and ironic of cinematic idolatry, which in his case takes the form of the cult of the great muses of the screen: Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, Claudia Cardinale, Catherine Deneuve and, above all, Greta Garbo, to whom he dedicated endless pages and verses. The poet even invented a visit by the star, incognito, to Belo Horizonte. What was initially a candid joke became true and lasted for decades, even after the author denied it.
Drummond's fixation on cinematic muses is impressive. The poem “Retrolâmpago de amor visual”, published in Newspapers in Brazil in 1975 and included in the book Spring speech and some shadows (1978), lists the names of no less than 103 actresses, many of whom are now forgotten.
The passion for Greta Garbo is only paralleled by the admiration for Charles Chaplin, to whom Carlos Drummond de Andrade dedicated countless poems and chronicles, extolling the character Charlie Chaplin as “perhaps the only permanent myth of our time”. In this case, it is a question of the harmony between two immense poets committed to the pain and joy of their fellow men.
Although he does not propose to think of cinema as a specific means of expression – as art, in short – Carlos Drummond de Andrade was always attentive to its aspect as a cultural phenomenon, as a shaper and transformer of behaviors. The act of going to the movies, of sharing dreams, fears and desires with strangers in a dark room – this was what interested the poet, who did not place himself above, but in the middle of the audience.
Having followed cinema since the silent era, initially in provincial cinemas, and having witnessed all its transformations over the decades – the advent of sound, color, cinemascope, splendor and decadence – gave Carlos Drummond de Andrade a broad perspective, marked by nostalgia and the melancholy brought on by the perception of the passage of time. These are recurring themes in poetry in general, and in his own in particular.
In the melancholic reflection on relentless time, a special place is given to the lament for the end of street cinemas, seen as temples of sociability, sentimental education and collective dreams.
A chronicle published in 1984 in Newspapers in Brazil begins with the following paragraph: “This Rio de Janeiro! The man passed in front of the Rian Cinema. In its place there was a construction site. On Copacabana Avenue, post 6, the man passed by the Caruso Cinema. There was no Caruso. There was a black hole, waiting for the construction site. Then someone said to him: 'The bank bought it'.”
Anyone who has lived in a large or medium-sized Brazilian city in recent decades will identify with this passage, as they identified with the beautiful documentary. ghost portraits, by Kleber Mendonça.
The color and the voice
Although he ignores the specificities of cinematic language, and even expresses a lack of patience with authors such as Godard, Pasolini, Antonioni and Bergman (“due to the excessive genius of their creations”), Carlos Drummond de Andrade does not fail to demonstrate here and there a keen perception of form. For example, in this comment on color: “In black and white, ugly things hurt less, and beautiful things continue to be beautiful, with the possibility of dressing up in even more beautiful clothes, created by our imagination. Technicolor cinema tends to be so vulgar that it offends our modesty.” It reminded me of a quote by François Truffaut: “In color cinema, ugliness enters from all sides.”
More than the color, what bothered the poet was the dubbing of foreign films, against which he launched a true crusade, especially after a congressman presented a bill that, if approved, would oblige all productions to be dubbed in Portuguese.
Bearing in mind the stature of Carlos Drummond de Andrade in Brazilian culture, the number of films his work has inspired is relatively small: half a dozen feature-length fiction films, another dozen documentaries. The highlight is evidently The priest and the girl (1966), a masterpiece by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade to which the poet dedicates some pages, both proud and moved. By the way: the film The priest and the girl It's in its entirety, for free, on YouTube, in a very reasonable copy.
There is a lot of humor and irony in the way this “active film chronicler” looks at cinema, as defined by Sérgio Augusto in his enlightening preface to the book. In Itabira, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Drummond de Andrade experienced cinema as a cultural phenomenon, as a stimulus to fantasy and as a daily habit. It is worth “listening” to this film enthusiast’s delightful conversation.
*Jose Geraldo Couto is a film critic. Author, among other books, of André Breton (Brasiliense).
Originally published on cinema blog do Moreira Salles Institute.
Reference
Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Cinema up close: prose and poetry. Organized by Pedro Augusto Graña Drummond and Rodrigo Lacerda. Rio de Janeiro, Record, 2024, 308 pages. [https://amzn.to/3CE4ng4]
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