By VICTOR SANTOS VIGNERON*
This year, important measures to support the Brazilian audiovisual sector were announced, which implies a resumption of public policies for film production
1.
It doesn't appeal so much to the imagination when it is said that, in 1898, Affonso Segreto recorded the first cinematographic images known in our country. The scenes of Guanabara Bay in that winter at the end of the century could not even impress us, as they disappeared. Perhaps they were conventional figurations of the “splendid cradle” type, or perhaps something was beyond the operator's control. Perhaps.
Be that as it may, the desire to glimpse — like a camera — the arrival in Rio de Janeiro on that June 19th is suppressed by the intellectual impulse to affirm the present through the past: the national film was born there. Brazilian Cinema Day, today, gives the form of law to this historiographical operation that once sought to claim the dignity of the country's production.
Before its officialization, Jean-Claude Bernardet (2008) highlighted the problems of the ephemeris. Perhaps due to the crisis that produced a rupture in Brazilian cinema in the early 1990s — his book was published in 1995 — Jean-Claude Bernardet was suspicious of historical explanations that used linear and homogeneous time.
Now, the ceremony promoted by the government on June 19th seems to double the bet on an “ideology of Brazilian cinema”, not only by linking the present to a specific origin, but also by filling in what is left in the middle with the usual quotations. , disarticulated and emptied of their power.
The objective of this text is to resize the set of quotes present in the presidential speech, giving weight to those that seem to me to enrich the debate on Brazilian cinema. A historiographical operation that, perhaps, sheds some light on those who are left out of the party.
2.
This year, important support measures for the Brazilian audiovisual sector were announced, which involves a resumption of public policies for film production.[I] After several speeches and tributes, the end of the ceremony was occupied by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's speech, showing extreme ecumenism in flirting with different trends in Brazilian cinema.
He remembered the middle class when mentioning Glauber Rocha, the São Paulo bourgeoisie who owned the Vera Cruz Cinematographic Company, the migrant aficionado of Amácio Mazzaropi's films and the worker present in Renato Tapajós' films. Interestingly, contemporary films, the most direct interlocutor present at the ceremony, did not find space in the speech.
Among the figures on stage, emphasis is also given to veterans — Antônio Pitanga, Marieta Severo, to name the only ones present greeted by Lula —, which accentuates the almost physical sense of survival of national cinema.
Little of this, however, was echoed in the mainstream press, which gave greater emphasis to a specific passage of the speech: “I'm from the group where artists, cinema and soap operas are not for teaching bitching. It's to teach culture, it's to tell, it's to teach history, it's to tell narratives. Not to say that we want to teach children the wrong things.” The speech leaves room for different readings due to its lack of assertiveness.
It is possible to suggest that Lula comes out in defense of the audiovisual field against a discourse that demonizes — sometimes literally — artistic creation, placing it as a form of life outside of morality: “It is not to say that we want to teach children the wrong things” . But it is also possible to identify in the speech a position of prejudice in relation to the possibilities of artistic creation: “whoring”.
It is true that such prejudice would not be something new. The ban on the display of the body and the exploration of eroticism formed a broad front that condemned the discussion on sexuality, feminism, masculinity, etc., for decades. It is possible to glimpse behind this discourse, a reading that condemns the actor's body to the dramatic chain (“teaching history, telling narratives”), so that the free use of erotic time — which breaks homogeneous and linear time — becomes an excrescence.
(In the same way that the condemnation of the “festive” character of carnival hides the fact that “vagrancy” was, historically, an accusation of class.) Thus, it can be said that Lula's comment updates a long tradition of contempt to “whoring” in national cinema, a contempt that gave rise to the concept of “pornochanchada” in the early 1970s.
The vogue for erotic comedies that took place in the late 1960s is known to historians (ABREU, 2015; GAMO; MELO, 2018). A first formal and thematic suggestion is located in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, in the “modern” comedies that began to appear in the second half of the 1960s, closely linked to the chronicle of experienced press figures, as in The Cariocas (1966). But the advent of what is properly (and improperly, from a conceptual point of view) called pornochanchada takes place in the 1970s.
It is at the most intense moment of the dictatorship's political repression, in the years following the Institutional Act no. 5 (1968), which saw a flowering of erotic comedies in areas such as Boca do Lixo in São Paulo and Beco da Fome in Rio de Janeiro.[ii] Thus, a low-budget and low-slander ecosystem was organized, led by figures located in the middle class, mixed with young film students and women who became the main focus of this commercial enterprise.
A consensus soon formed against this type of production in “authorized” discourse. Cinemanovistas and state authorities converged, for different reasons, on the understanding that such production constituted a shame for the country's image. The study of this production, therefore, concerns a circuit that develops, with difficulty, as a parallel sector. At the end of the 1970s, Jean-Claude Bernardet (1979) recognized the elitist character embedded in the current criticism of “pornochanchada”, which he himself practiced.
The most curious thing here is to note how this position extended to the actions of the mainstream press at the time of the political Opening, inclined to highlight, alongside the excesses of Embrafilme, the proliferation of pornography in national cinema. Overall, it is a most lasting image and one that forms a community of opinion that brings together Lula's speech with those who are now denouncing it.
I would not, however, like to focus on the “deviations”, “inattentions” or “errors” in Lula’s speech, which seems to me to be the keynote of discourse analysis in the Brazilian press. After all, despite the fact that the president himself announced that he would make the speech impromptu, the set of references mobilized indicates that we are facing obvious prepared material — including the parts that express the government's political commitments to power groups that are not in the audience, as seems to be the case in the controversial passage above.
Returning to the general jam of Brazilian cinema, a fact that may go unnoticed is the marking of the point of view from where Lula mentions them: (i) Vera Cruz is in the same São Bernardo do Campo where Lula began his career; in this sense, the speech insists that the PT and CUT were founded in Vera Cruz; (b) Glauber Rocha connects with a middle-class cinema, for which Lula “asks permission” to consider the dimension of work involved in production (which feeds the hypothesis, launched in 1967 by Bernardet (2007) and reiterated in 1973 by Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes (2016, p. 186-205), that Cinema Novo is a production enclosed in its own class).
(iii) Renato Tapajós filmed on behalf of the Metalworkers Union of São Bernardo and Diadema, for which he made several films, such as Work accident (1977) and Assembly line (1982), cited by Lula;[iii] (iv) Amácio Mazzaropi is, finally, the only national director in relation to whom Lula acts as a spectator.[iv]
Interestingly, the talk about Brazilian cinema is marked by a slip. At one point, Lula refers to the first Brazilian film he watched, as a child, in Vicente de Carvalho, in Baixada Santista. It evokes the precarious projection, on the wall of a bakery, but when citing the film in question, it mentions the Italian Cinema Paradiso (1988). In addition to confusion, I maintain that it is also a symptom. Because the lapse that makes him exchange the Brazilian film for one of the icons of the golden moment of metacinema (Xavier, 1995), seems to close the circuit with an auditorium, after all, internal to the cinematographic field. Thus, the dimension of personal experience that marked each of the quotes from Brazilian cinema is erased. And the prepared speech, here, predominates.
3.
There is, however, a single reference that does not concern the field of film production and that, therefore, escapes this closed circuit established with the audience at the ceremony. Because at a certain point Lula is not referring to the films, but to the clothes needed to see them. He remembers that, to go to the cinema in his childhood, it was necessary to wear a jacket and tie. In the absence of a play at home, he had to turn to a neighbor and, in return, he committed to accompanying his son, who uses a wheelchair, to the cinema. The anecdote appeals to the comic when he and the boy were fighting, which put into question the possibility of both going to the session.
It matters little, here as in other passages of the speech, whether the image is anchored in precise facts. What matters is that at this point Lula refers to an element, let's say, recessive in the history of national production, which does not fit into Brazilian Cinema Day. Let us remember that, until now, Lula referred to the cinematic experience in a way that was always mediated by film production; Cinema Paradiso, in the end, predominates over Vicente de Carvalho. The case of the jacket is the only moment in which the primordial experience mobilized by speech is that of spectator. And the jacket, in Brazil, has an important place in understanding cinema.
In the same year that the celebrations of the IV Centenary of the city of São Paulo took place, in 1954, governor Lucas Nogueira Garcez led one of the first “cleaning” operations of Boca do Lixo in São Paulo, with the expulsion of a fraction of its residents .[v]
That same year, the 1st São Paulo International Film Festival took place, with screenings in the city center. This event with a pompous name, which was in its first edition, featured not only an official selection of recent world productions, but also an ambitious program that included the arrival of important film critics to the country, including the Frenchman André Bazin .
His comparison of the São Paulo festival with the Cannes and Venice festivals was dubious (2018, p. 1484-1485). The films sent to São Paulo were negligible due to the competition with the two festivals, but the scope of the São Paulo festival was much greater than that of its European counterparts. In this sense, André Bazin suggests that the best comparison is with the Berlin Festival, which would have an interface with a large local population.
Among its recommendations for improving this public sense of the festival, one concerns clothing, the requirement for tuxedo and in a silk robe made, on the eve of Carnival, for the morning audience at Cine Morocco. André Bazin associates this with the high prices charged at the box office, recommending that films be shown in the city's suburban circuits, in order to reach a wider audience.
More recently, in Wet Mácula, Jean-Claude Bernardet recalls that wearing a jacket was important to test the authorities of the dictatorship when he joined USP as a professor (2023). It is interesting to note that the exceptional nature of wearing the jacket at university contrasts with the current use of Lula's jacket, around the same time, to go to suburban cinemas in Ipiranga. The lack of awareness among intellectuals regarding the importance of social clothing is unintentionally recorded by Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes in his work on Humberto Mauro, from 1972.
Regarding a figure that appears at a glance in braza slept (1928), the historian states: “This man provokes the curiosity of many spectators, as I saw in classes and film clubs. As for me, I haven't forgotten him since the first time I saw him, despite his presence on the screen being so fortuitous. Many tend to classify him as a beggar, but they hesitate because of the tie, forgetting that in the past the universality of this item of clothing covered even the most disinherited. It's not the tie or any other distinguishing sign that makes me see him as a working man, but a feeling that takes shape as soon as he gets up and leaves: that this is someone who used the midday interruption to come eat your ridiculous meal in a garden” (SALLES GOMES, 1974, p. 224)
Basically, this oblivion to which the poor's clothing is relegated is extended to poor cinema itself, as demonstrated by Maria Rita Galvão in her Chronicle of São Paulo cinema (1975)
Therefore, this brief opening of Lula's speech restores to us an aspect of cinema that gradually lost vigor in the face of the construction of cinematographic discourse. In 1955, the same Paulo Emílio wrote an article entitled “The horse and poor opera” (2015, p. 545-550), in which he analyzes the intertwining of cinema with popular cultural manifestations, such as Horse Opera.
It is in this context that something bizarre circulates, as a theme and as a form, a character like Carlitos, whose hallmark is the jacket.[vi] Therefore, it is a case of highlighting, as Eric Hobsbawm does, the revolutionary character of cinema in the face of the avant-gardes of the early 2022th century, with their non-traditional artistic modernism (XNUMX).[vii]
In the Brazilian case, it is worth remembering, chanchada suffered immensely with the rejection of the gaze of middle-class or bourgeois cinema with artistic intentions. And yet, it constitutes a unique case in our history of perennial and deep-rooted communication between production and popular classes.[viii] This is partly due to the sensitivity of certain bodily practices projected on screen to a dramaturgical and cultural tradition that predates cinema. It is, perhaps, in this sense, that Lula's speech suggests a specific direction when commenting on the jacket barrier. Because what was at stake on June 19, 1898, was filming, not sharing.
*Victor Santos Vigneron He has a PhD in social history from USP.
References
ABREU, Nuno César. Boca do Lixo: cinema and popular classes. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2015.
BAZIN, Andre. Complete ecrits. Paris: Éditions Macula, 2018, v. 2.
BERNARDET, Jean-Claude. “Pornography, other people’s sex” In. MANTEGA, Guido (org.). Sex and power. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1979, p. 103-108.
BERNARDET, Jean-Claude. Brazil in the time of cinema: essay on Brazilian cinema from 1958 to 1966. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007.
BERNARDET, Jean-Claude. Classic historiography of Brazilian cinema: methodology and pedagogy. São Paulo: Annablume, 2008.
BERNARDET, Jean-Claude; ANZUÁTEGUI, Sabina. Wet taint: memory/rhapsody. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2023.
DOURADO, Ana Karicia Machado. Chanchada: performance of the unusual and paradox of the comedian. Thesis (doctorate in Social History) – São Paulo, University of São Paulo, 2013.
GALVÃO, Maria Rita. Chronicle of São Paulo cinema. Sao Paulo: Attica, 1975.
GAMO, Alessandro; MELO, Luís Alberto Rocha. “Stories of Boca and Beco” In. RAMOS, Fernão Pessoa and SCHVARZMAN, Sheila (org.). New history of Brazilian cinema. São Paulo: Edições Sesc São Paulo, 2018, np
HOBSBAWM, Eric. The Age of Empires, 1875-1914. Rio de Janeiro/São Paulo: Peace and Land, 2022.
SALLES GOMES, Paulo Emílio. Humberto Mauro, Cataguases, Cinearte. São Paulo: Perspectiva/Edusp, 1974.
SALLES GOMES, Paulo Emílio. Cinema in the century. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2015.
SALLES GOMES, Paulo Emílio. A colonial situation? São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2016.
TAVARES, Krishna. The workers' struggle in the militant cinema of Renato Tapajós. Dissertation (master’s degree in Audiovisual Media and Processes) — São Paulo, University of São Paulo, 2011.
XAVIER, Ismail. “From metacinema to industrial pastiche: the Post cacoete” In: Folha de S. Paul (feuilleton), 12/05/1985, p. 2-4.
XAVIER, Ismail. Seventh art: a modern cult: aesthetic idealism and cinema. São Paulo: Edições Sesc, 2017.
Notes
[I] It is important to say that the existence of a public policy for the cinema sector is not evidence in itself. The crisis caused by the Collor government, for example, was linked to the prospect of abolishing public financing for cinema, with the creation of private investment mechanisms through tax exemption.
[ii] In 1980, Boca do Lixo would appear in the film Road of life (1980), in which Nelson Pereira is attentive to the centrality of the region for the circulation of another popular manifestation, country music in the process of transitioning to country music with the duo Milionário and José Rico.
[iii] For an analysis of Renato Tapajós' work, I refer to the research by Krishna Tavares (2011).
[iv] It is possible that the mention of Mazzaropi is connected with the recent announcement of the restoration of part of his filmography, to be carried out by the Cinemateca Brasileira and the Mazzaropi Museum.
[v] This is the theme of the final tale of bouncer (1975), by João Antônio. In a way, the recent “cleaning” of the neighboring region forms a backdrop to the book Eviction room: diary of a slum dweller (1960), by Carolina Maria de Jesus, about the Canindé Favela.
[vi] Lula mentions, among the films projected by the Metalworkers Union of São Bernardo, Modern timess (1936).
[vii] Taking opposite paths, Maria Rita Galvão (1975), and Ismail Xavier (2017), recapitulate the divorce between modernist intellectuals and cinema in the 1920s in Brazil.
[viii] In this sense, I refer to the research by Ana Karícia Dourado (2013).
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