THE BRAZILWOOD MAN
BASED ON THE WORKS OF OSWALD DE ANDRADE
SCRIPT BY JOAQUIM PEDRO DE ANDRADE
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF ALEXANDRE EULALIO
DIRECTED BY JOAQUIM PEDRO DE ANDRADE
TO GLAUBER ROCHA
Did you like it?
Thank you.
Please, two at a time. She's very tired, please.
Please, you may wait outside. Please.
Madam, we write theater reviews for the Gazeta Popular.
We came to see the show and to interview you.
But, after seeing you dance, we are speechless.
It is a great good fortune that your restless spirit has brought you to Brazil.
It seems you were born dancing,
bearing to the four corners of the earth the scandal of your personality.
Before my birth, my mother was in a state of deep depression.
Her situation was truly tragic.
In fact, she could only nourish herself with oysters and very cold champagne.
When they ask me when I started dancing,
I reply that it was there, in the maternal womb...
perhaps as a result of the oysters and of the champagne.
The nourishment of Aphrodite.
Thank you.
You were absolutely dazzling!
It was sensational, absolutely sensational.
The presentation was a success, a notable success.
I'm so glad you came.
Let's go!
-Slowly, please. -Why are those two allowed in?
Because they're two journalists, old acquaintances of the madam.
Calm down. She will see you all.
My grandparents almost made me into a mystical Puritan...
prepared for every heroic posture...
and definitively separated from the slightest sensual expression.
-Here's to us! -Champagne.
Here's to us!
When I started to dance, still a child,
compelled by an irresistible internal attraction...
the feeling of joy that shuddered through my nerves was so strong...
that the simple suggestion of physical contact, even imaginary,
made me shiver with ecstasy.
And I swooned,
victim of the bite, at once both sweet and painful, of pleasure.
I felt like screaming.
It was as if every fiber in my body had reached that paroxysm of love
which generally lasts no more than an instant.
As if my every nerve shivered with such intensity
that I no longer knew if I was experiencing endless joy
or pain without reprieve.
I felt these sensations, so languid and terrible...
that it seemed as if the pleasure would kill me.
And I swooned.
My soul was a battlefield...
upon which Apollo, Dionysus, Christ,
Nietzsche and Richard Wagner...
disputed the terrain.
It's Dorotéia.
She lives with us at home.
She's a dancer as well.
How old?
Eighteen.
There are thousands like her.
Here, it was for you.
Her panties!
Give me a sniff.
What monstrosity is this?
What's that in your hand?
That's what I'd like to know.
If I'm not mistaken, it's the remains of a woman's panties,
medium size, your size, actually.
It was over there, right by the front door.
-You've gone crazy! -Has someone bitten your ass?
A piece of your panties was next to the front door,
through which you should have passed a long time ago!
But I don't wear panties.
What's all this about panties that's got her so angry?
-It's not panties, just a rag. -She's imagining things.
Where are they? Show me. Don't hide it.
What happened? Has anyone seen the panties I've just bought?
I've got no panties. It was just a cloth hanging outside.
Lala is imagining things.
To work, Dorotéia.
-Here we go. -Let's do number one.
Ready.
One and...
And one, two, three and four,
five, six, seven, eight.
It was the romanticized intellect that selected the subjects of poetry.
But a poem can as well be born from a bunch of onions,
as from a love lost.
It is not necessary to have the dark of night in solitary climes
nor the midnight hour and utter silence for poetry to arise.
It can be inspired by a sunset
or by the smokestack of a factory.
By the divine body of a woman
or by the polished hood of a Cadillac.
Blaise Cendrars, one of the greatest French poets today asks:
“Woman?
But what about irony?”
Haven't the modern poets taken on Einstein's theories,
sports, soccer, the telegraph,
the constituent assemblies of government,
and the cabaret as the driving principle of lyricism?
It just so happens that upon the stage of our century,
a very noisy opera is acted out,
that of the man on the street.
Let us act it out!
-Thank you. -I really enjoyed it. Congratulations.
Thank you.
Here you are.
Thank you.
You're a brilliant orator, sir.
It would be a pleasure to print this in the Gazeta Popular.
“Provoked by a sunset
or by the smokestack of a factory.
By the divine body of a woman
or by the divine body of a Cadillac.”
Figures my friend, just figures.
“Every topic is vital. There are no poetic subjects.”
“A poem can as well be born from a bunch of onions as from a love lost.”
“Poet Guilherme de Almeida, Still In Love By Telephone.”
“Aranha Shocks Lover With Electric Poem.”
“Freedom of choice enriches the modern poet.”
“He can versify everything: scientific discoveries...”
“The poet, no longer dwells in his ivory tower,
but receives a telegram of intelligence in the streetcar.”
“All of these are eminently lyrical. And everything interests us, everything!”
“It just so happens that upon the stage of our century,
a very noisy opera is acted out,
that of the man on the street.
Let us act it out!”
“...no longer by the shore of the lake, but in the game of soccer!”
Publish it!
Take off your hat.
You take it off!
Don't do it.
We must set aside foolish things and improve ourselves.
We must have a basic orientation.
For instance, the question of impersonality in art.
It must be solved.
On the other hand, it is critical to clarify certain sordid incidents
like the one between Victor Hugo and Saint-Boeuf.
One thing like that annuls the rest.
For myself, I decided to follow a serious program of studies,
to restore my ignorance.
Portuguese, arithmetic, ballistics, everything.
I can only see one way for myself to become moral:
to cut off this carrot that God gave me.
I had a completely idiotic idea:
to bugger the poet Martins Fontes!
We went to see him yesterday, a group of admirers.
He thinks that here, public opinion doesn't exist.
He spoke to me of the intrigues and scandals he's been a victim of.
I got a hard-on.
I believe the time has come to make an irrevocable decision.
To hell with Lala's intolerable jealousy
and the kid's endless coughing.
It's time to give her the boot!
But with style!
And Dorotéia?
Dorotéia is a deity who descended to earth.
You should have seen her “Dance of the Elephants”
with appropriate miming.
Pure genius!
The other day, she showed me her breasts.
And then?
If only there were a double force
or triple, multiple...
the balls would always go in.
“Under the forceful pressure of Herr Eckstein's embrace...”
You waste too much light with those reading sessions.
Do you want us to be ignorant?
Here, drink up.
What is that?
Hot punch with ginger and peanut.
You think we're not up to date today?
-And the day before yesterday. -The day before that.
“I believe that during the passionate embrace of that man,
she not only felt his kiss upon her lips,
but also the contact of his erect penis in certain parts of her body.”
-What's that? -Freud.
-Let's see. -“This revolting”...
“This revolting perception was repressed and substituted in her memory
by the innocent sensation of a pressure on her breasts.
Dora then recalled a scene from her infancy
in which she suckled at the breast of her wet nurse, a pretty young lady,
while pulling rhythmically
at her little brother's penis.
Clearly, the primary erogenous object, or the nipple,
was substituted by the sexual object present at the moment, namely...
Herr Eckstein's penis.
We further observe that this fantasy,
excessively perverted,
of sucking the penis
has the most innocent of origins, and may be described as...
as a remote memory of suckling at the breast of the mother or wet nurse.
Moreover, in other cases, the teats of certain cows likewise play
an intermediate role between the breast and the penis.”
What's this?
A surprise, Lala.
You see,
this is a new spermicidal.
It's the latest innovation of science.
It'll help us a lot.
It's fail-safe. It's a phenomenal contraceptive.
-Do you have to stick it up there? -Yes, just a bit. Come on.
No, it loses all poetry.
Lala, don't be old-fashioned at a moment like this.
It's very modern.
The most advanced people in the world are using it.
-Come on. -No.
-No, I don't want to. -Just a little.
Get off! No!
So much feeling can be hidden beneath an umbrella.
I'm so alone, tremendously alone.
Dorotéia, you are a light-haired inflection.
You are a dancer of mystical tangos.
You, for me, are the source from whence flows poetry.
Dorotéia, even those who do not know you, admire you.
Alone, but surrounded by the most beautiful acclaims,
the applause of the literary youth!
I can't bear it anymore! That woman isn't my mother.
She falsified my papers. It's all fake!
She says I'm wasting my time with you. That I could have princes in my bed.
Dorotéia, let us...
Let us flee to Ethiopia! Let's go!
I'll abandon everything, but you leave that old witch!
Dorotéia, they want to kill love, to subvert the very pole,
to quench the thirst I have for another being.
They come from the flank, from the side, from above, from behind.
If he should come, I will defend you.
If she should come, I will defend you.
If they all should come, with a garland of arrows...
I will defend you!
-You don't want to marry me? -I can't, my girl.
Not even Lala I married, with a son and all.
Haven't you heard my father? He'd disinherit me. I need time.
I'm not going to Pensao Jau!
Penséao Jau is a good home, my child.
We'll just spend Carnival there.
Perhaps then, certain individuals will assume their responsibilities.
-Out of the way! -Why do you only squirt the others?
You squirt everyone but me!
I'm a cynic. I'll squirt whoever I want to.
The perfume squirter is mine! Biriba gave it to me!
It's one of the big ones too. You don't love me.
You two are suffocating me. I'm leaving for Rio.
I'm going to star in a movie.
Which film?
Love and Patriotism.
Who is the idiot directing it?
None of your business! I'm leaving for good!
Get out of my life!
Dorotéia. Hussy! A whore a thousand times over!
The love of our life, murdered by jealousy.
My kingdom for a wheelchair.
I've become the critic of my own tragedy.
I wish she could have left a letter, written in violet.
Our love should have been safeguarded, ever so closely.
-Yes. Now anything is possible. -Anything.
Prison, courthouses, insane asylums.
The electric chair.
-Mr. Coelho! -Ms. Corina!
What a pleasure. Please sit down.
I couldn't fail to come and compliment you, Mr. Coelho.
Your poem about the female dog who met misfortune in the street!
How moving!
That description of the moral suffering
that the little animal went through!
It's so human!
The poem is even ironic, at least in my view.
But unfortunately, it's not mine.
The author is the dearly missed Silva Jardim.
He passed away recently in that absurd accident.
You don't say!
Was he the one who visited Italy and fell into Mt. Vesuvius?
How extraordinary!
My friends, behold the wonderful surprise I've prepared for you.
Dorotéia, the future and promising star of Love and Patriotism,
a Brazilian film of great importance.
This young girl will enchant us with the magic whirlwind of her art
whose splendorous glow
shall reproduce the divine inner flame of the bacchanals of the spirit.
She will dance, accompanied at the piano,
by her eminent mother.
Dance, Dorotéia,
you are the rising sun on the horizon of this nation's art.
My dream is to earn the applause of the families.
Ready.
She doesn't answer in Sao Paulo.
That daughter of three generations of whores!
Man is a microcosm...
as it were, a summary of the Earth.
And as such, he is guided by immutable and eternal laws.
I agree with these ideas, corroborated by science.
However, there are eruptions, cataclysms!
Dorotéia is my Etna in bloom.
The most extraordinary of whores!
She ran off to Rio without paying the boardinghouse.
She's still there frequenting the worst literary dives...
with the biggest good-for-nothings of Brazilian literature!
Let's extend our leg and make them lose their footing!
We'll trip them up in great style!
We won't engage in literary politics, just intrigue.
Down with rich rhymes and poor ideas!
We'll create the modern woman.
Cecil B. DeMille finished off bad French theater.
Soaked, sick, rheumatized
by a tradition of artistic tears.
We demand surgical intervention!
Removal of the tear glands!
Down with the yawn as an aesthetic sentiment!
And long live vertiginous audacity!
We want athletic Dulcineas.
Don Quixote was a great athlete in the wrong century.
Today, he would be a champion horseman!
We don't concern ourselves with being new. We're up to date.
Pedro Alvares Cabral, but discovering not by chance!
Let the intellectual sanitation begin.
Long live us! Down with the others!
Call in Paulo, Rene,
even the graceless Graga Aranha.
The modernist revolution is about to begin!
Agile, the theater, son of the acrobat!
Agile and illogical. The novel born from invention.
Agile, our everyday poetry. The Brazilwood poetry!
The theme of our art shall be the struggle taking place in this sprawling city today.
Workers demanding their rights.
The bourgeoisie defending their coffers.
Civil servants gliding along the rails of regulation.
Industrialists battling the competition.
Aristocrats showing off their splendors.
Politicians ensuring their ascent.
Women breaking the shackles of their secular servitude.
Poetry exists in facts!
The saffron and ochre shacks against the green of the slums
under the tropical sky, are aesthetic facts!
Carnival in Rio is the religious event of the people.
Brazilwood! Barbarous and ours!
The synthesis, invention,
a new perspective, a new scale.
Language without archaisms, or erudition,
but the multitudinous contribution of all errors!
The way we speak is the way we are.
I insult the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeois-money, the bourgeois-bourgeois.
The well-executed digestion of Sao Paulo.
The bent-man. The rump-man.
The ever-cautious little by little.
The scholarly side,
the fatality of the first white to arrive in port
and dominate the savage jungle.
Everyone to the center of my inebriating rancor.
Red rage, fecund rage, cyclic rage.
Out!
Out with the good bourgeois!
Imagine, I dreamt I had changed sexes, and I was your fiancée.
It's demoralization setting in.
If I don't do something quick, I don't know where I'll end up.
I've come to the conclusion that I must act energetically at once.
Kidnap Dorotéia and marry her at the police station. Yes, I have a plan.
I can't let her finish this film.
As in every film, she'll be forced to kiss that idiot leading man.
You're going to Rio with me today.
When she's coming out of the hotel, you'll appear.
Atop a truck pretending to be filming.
I already rented the truck and the camera.
Then I arrive in a taxi, club the old lady and grab Dorotéia.
If anyone asks for help, you scream, “It's a film!”
Nobody will react.
Camera! Action!
The next day, there it was in the headlines,
on the first page of one of those sensationalist rags of Rio.
“Movie Star Saluted By Firmness Of The Tropics.”
Below, a photo of the kiss with the erection clearly visible.
I knew from the outset and warned her
that the camera lens would soil her for good.
Yesterday I grew weak, and I buggered Lala.
But my attitude before this fact is now absolutely stoic.
Total abstinence, isolation, seriousness in my studies.
I spend days locked in my study.
By the way, yesterday someone moved in across the street,
a young man who is a true Adonis.
For more than two hours you left me sitting here!
Didn't you get my telegram? Where's the other one?
Outside, waiting. He didn't want to come in.
Why? What's the matter with him?
Now, Dorotéia, come on!
As if that photo in the paper wasn't enough,
he went there and saw that scene with the kiss.
What kiss?
That kiss in Love and Patriotism, the leading man with the hard-on.
Who got a hard-on?
Dorotéia, don't play innocent.
The leading man got a hard-on.
It was in the papers. Everyone saw it. And it's going to be in the movie.
You call that nothing?
So it's my fault? Was it my prick?
Let's say that a prick is not your most notable physical attribute.
But the fact that certain pricks have been your property,
more or less private, for more or less time,
on that matter, there is not the slightest doubt.
You've always thought I was a whore, haven't you?
If I had the money, I'd take the first train anywhere
and go become a whore for real!
How is it my fault if the guy got a hard-on?
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
Sometimes, a slight touch is enough.
Sometimes, with just a look, it's enough.
The film stinks.
That actor is even more stupid than the director.
To top it off, they didn't even pay me.
My dance show was a flop.
The critics ridiculed it. My friends vanished.
I was unfaithful to you.
I was.
I let myself fall in with men who chased me insistently.
Mother begged me for the love of God.
Nothing serious happened.
But I feel I was unfaithful to our dream.
I no longer deserve the life we envisioned for ourselves.
Dorotéia, our dream is invincible.
These critics from Rio are fools.
You're a cunning angel, an artist.
We'll launch your complete rehabilitation in Sao Paulo.
And at the Theatro Municipal, no less.
We'll bribe all the critics, Dorotéia! All of them!
Thank you.
Thank you for coming.
The critics from Rio were unfair with our young dancer.
How are you?
You will now see a stripped down exhibition of great simplicity.
For that very reason, I believe that you, critics of Sao Paulo gathered here today,
will very easily recognize the qualities of our little Dorotéia.
If you'll excuse me, the show is about to begin.
I have nervous paralysis in my legs. I can't dance.
Don't be a smart ass. The critics are waiting. Dance!
What's up?
She's got a nervous paralysis.
The number is starting. Dance! Immediately!
Come on.
Don't weigh me down, help!
-You stall them. -Giving me orders?
My dear critics, please excuse me, but she's fainted.
-It's purely psychological. -Dorotéia!
No. You stay out of this.
Son of a bitch!
-She's all mine! -Come on, already.
Let's go!
-Let go. You're really heavy! -Taxi!
Taxi!
-Quick, to the juvenile court! -Sir!
-Bitch! -Come back, you louts!
-Wait! No, you can't! -I have to speak to the juvenile judge.
-Speak to my lawyer. -Is she a minor?
It's a serious matter! She's my client!
A judge.
-You can't put anything on this table! -Get me a juvenile judge.
What's going on here after all?
-Just a moment. -Your Honor!
Your Honor, this child is being exploited and debased
by this woman who says she's her mother, but isn't.
Enough!
-Ma'am, the poor girl's just fainted. -That woman is a pimp,
an exploiter, a shrew.
They abducted my daughter! Bandits! You fakes!
Get up at once!
-Who are you? -I'm this ingrate's mother, Your Honor.
I can prove that these are creeps!
This one's a scorpion and that one a red spider.
-Don't complain to me. -This woman is a pimp.
She's not her mother.
I can explain it, Your Honor!
The minor will be sent to the Good Shepherd Reformatory.
No! For Christ's sake! I'm her mother!
Enough!
What relationship have you got with the minor?
I'm the mother. I'm the mother of this girl, Your Honor.
That's not what I asked. I asked where's the father or the tutor?
I'm the mother! I'm right here!
She's not the mother!
Enough! Quiet!
I must proceed to the gynecological exam.
Your Honor, is this really necessary?
-Don't spread your legs! -Spread your legs!
Let go of me! Let go!
Get this man off the table!
It's so good to see you.
“SEDUCER IS NOT THE FATHER”
Did you believe that story?
Just look at my belly. You really believe I'm pregnant?
Only if by God.
Now I'm God's bride. I belong only to him.
I can't stay long.
Here. I brought this for you to put it on your father's grave.
Will you leave me this newspaper? I'd like the photo as a keepsake.
No, you'll have to forgive me,
but the Parnassian poets are totally outdated,
they're verse-making machines.
Times have changed, ma'am.
Suffice it to say that by means of photo editing,
a businessman, very few days ago,
managed to cash the same check in various banks.
An innovation in Brazil, how rare!
I want to know everything. You must tell me absolutely everything.
With all of the booing, the Modern Art Week was a success.
Now no one will dare to write beautifully!
It's over.
If you want to write devastating yet rejuvenating criticism,
you need not pretend to be solemn or profound.
It's only a matter of not confusing seriousness with tedium.
So nice of you to come. We must talk.
The social snobbery open their doors to modern art.
My dear Branca Clara,
when one begins to fancy our store's windows,
it's time to re-visit Paris.
What I want is to escape, leave.
I don't know, play golf, badminton.
Have fun, go wild!
We modern poets, madam,
are aspirin for madness and the scrapyard.
The Cloud-Breaker will weigh anchor soon, as you know.
We could travel together.
Wonderful! When do we leave?
Joy.
Branca.
Branca Clara.
What could be awaiting us after so many waiting rooms?
I'm a solitary woman, my dear sirs.
An idle woman of the upper class for whom existence matters little.
Sao Paulo, Paris, Luxor, Aswan,
the dams of the Upper Nile.
Nothing satisfies me.
Life is a worthless trifle, my friends.
Yes, next to you, Madam.
But allow me to present you with this little purse of red beads.
In my opinion, it'll make you look like a hussy.
Perhaps not very elegant from afar, in the street.
But at night, in bed...
I only ask an “aprés-minuit” of your life.
What is an “aprés-minuit” anyway?
Afterwards we will part,
but you'll carry in your body the pride of having been loved by a modernist poet.
Who is it for? Don't go on.
Don't bewitch me,
by the soul of your mother.
I'd like to fill your purse with the most expensive cigarettes,
hold onto the hair from your depilated body,
the belly that points to the cold center of the Earth.
My dear Mr. Oswald...
all the men who ever approached me, down to this day,
went limp.
All of them.
I'm completely anxious.
I dreamt I had sexual relations with Jesus Christ and other gods.
That's just too much.
Don't you think?
You know what I think of you, Madam?
That you are your own victim.
An impassive victim.
Explain everything, please.
Simple, Madam.
But you must allow a certain fluency to psychoanalysis
which may indeed need to approach the cynicism of certain dissections.
I allow everything, gentlemen.
Except for one thing.
A capricious character,
who never found true happiness,
calmly surrendered to pleasure,
to ephemeral delight.
What an astute analysis.
Hell.
You've already suffered too much.
Don't you see that that's over?
You're in a state, if you'll allow me, that is truly dangerous.
Not for yourself, but for the rest of the male gender.
Our faith in living could be useful to you in this delicate moment,
our ever-present spiritual dynamite.
No.
Why restart this endless game?
For me, it's like a potato race.
It's of no interest. Ready.
If you like,
send a declaration of love in writing to my cabin.
It's the night watchman.
A message for Madam Branca Clara.
Come in and read it.
It's long.
Read it.
“Madam...
our arrogance yielded before the chirping of your gestures.
Meanwhile, take note that from these words carelessly tossed onto paper,
like the gold of a millionaire onto a chance number at the roulette table,
there rises up, like a phallus under the pants
the hard core of a personality.
You, on the other hand, are a soft ass,
only interested in two things:
greyhounds and chewing gum.
We have endured, since the tenderest of ages,
the invasion of crocodiles...
and of the earthworms of our native land.
You look for exterior beauty,
while we, on the contrary, search for beauty within.
You are given to idle whims,
while we adore masculine struggle,
and in our free time,
we are accustomed to exert ourselves in hitting below the belt.
This aloof happiness that we guard
we have achieved, as have the rest of men,
through humiliation, begging, robbery and piracy.
It is in fact, made of pacts with the non-existent.”
“But behold, love has caught us.
And tonight,
we watch unfold on the elegant tip of this transatlantic liner,
the humiliating Fat Tuesday
of all these fools aboard.
We compare the solar scorn
of our new friend,
lying, by now, in her orthopedic bed,
to all the others.
Signed, Oswald.”
St. Joseph.
Patron Saint of Fools.
What a kiss.
It went all the way down.
How I miss Miss Bankhurst for her advice.
Whatever he wants, it's there.
I gave him everything for the first time.
My small, spherical breasts, my belly.
But no, he has obstinate hands.
He wants to get there, to the center, the division of my being.
He made me play with his perfume squirter.
He licked my pussy.
I never knew it was so nice.
And the other way around?
Good idea, Captain.
Such an ingenue.
To port!
Excuse me.
To starboard, damn it!
Branca. Branca Clara.
Why this anesthetic suicide?
To love is a great vulgarity, dear sir.
Another taste?
Thank you, I'm full.
I just want to wash my hands and go pee.
An eggnog?
I'm afraid it'll give me gas.
For the first time after so many years,
I feel my heart blush.
My weary heart.
At last, my hands touch someone who is happiness in a man's suit.
Shall I wait in vain for the masked bandit to steal my pearls
and rape my anti-hygienic virginity?
No.
Let's do it now.
On a full stomach.
Okay?
-Paris, Paris. -City of lights.
The Seine, the Eiffel Tower, the Bateaux Mouches,
the Louvre, the Place Pigalle.
Maestro,
I'd like to introduce you to our black tobacco.
It's a typically Brazilian product.
You eat, drink, smoke it and fall down.
Cachaga.
My dear Jacques, I find the feijoada tastes like shit.
But this Cachaca...
-It's absolutely detestable. -Really?
-Is anybody looking? -No, all clear.
All right.
It's gone. Discreetly.
Madam, without offending your pride as a Brazilian,
I must say you're a Russian princess.
Beautiful, generous, amiable.
And your palace art studio is as original
as your canvases are simple and exquisite.
Big spaces always attracted me, my dear poet.
The voyage is the leitmotiv of my life.
But now, I'm taking a voyage within myself
in the company my two new friends.
And not merely spiritually.
To leave, to travel,
to leave behind fathers, mothers...
Dogs.
And lovers! Adventure is what counts.
What is Brazil today?
A philosophy of the slave house entwined in the depths of the national character.
Prince Tovalu!
A magnificent example of our cultural roots.
My latest composition, “The Brazilian Woodpecker.”
How did you like it?
A rhombic piece with the empathy of heavy humor.
You can't sense the design, the line.
Oswald, can I slap this faggot?
Of course, my dear.
You know, Madam, in my country,
there is a small town called Brazil.
“Corruption of Brazil,” you know.
It's inhabited by old slaves
who made a godlike entrance among us.
The Brazil of Africa.
Down there, they adopted the names of their former masters.
Nogueira, Camargo, Mesquita, etc.
Oh, how cute.
You little Negroes are so delicious! How cute!
Pardon, Madam. My name is “Filet.”
Please sit down.
Now I'd like to show you my latest painting.
It's called The Negress.
A metaphysical portrait of my black mother.
An image that long lay dormant in my unconscious
that I recovered when I read Freud,
which they actually shoved down my throat.
What do you think?
But it's Grandma!
Yes?
Who? The dry cleaner?
Send him up. No, wait.
I'll see him tomorrow at 3:30.
My tea and toast!
Your stockings are so fine. Are they durable?
They last for three or four hours.
You're so silent and spiritless.
Mouths that lick themselves like the best of canines.
And I, who expected to remain cynical for the rest of my life.
You talked of merely adorning the passing days.
With someone else, I would have burst out laughing.
But your simplicity,
your barbarity...
I never thought you were so strong.
You're caught in the atmosphere that you yourself created.
Fornication is delectable.
I'm the newest and most beautiful of loves
in a new skin.
You are the answer in the vast telephone conversation of life.
When you enter the fox-trot
there in those hotels with the putrefaction of the big band,
I feel your two breasts prick my heart,
and I take in my hand your warm ass,
so muscular, so lively, like in the best Charlestons.
Love's effects.
Today, I was nude in my room...
and noticed my thighs got rounder.
My tits became hard and riveted
with the work of your hands.
What a tingling in the nipple.
The problem is, the light comes from above.
Let's see these two for now. They're not bad at all.
Four days of joy and parades that take over the capital.
Carnival is unique in the world, Blaise.
Not even in ancient times with the bacchanals or memorable feasts
was such a spectacle to be seen.
An entire city in full debauchery.
You can't miss it!
That almanac is more symbolic.
This one here is more radical, more ironic, absurd, provocative!
Paulo, finally I'll see the sun.
The simple fact of existing is happiness.
Thanks to you, I experienced a revelation, Brazil.
I'm as happy as a king.
And free like a man.
Let's go.
You only steal from whom you love.
Mal de mer, my dear. Mal de mer.
It's always like that, my dear big Olive.
Setting out is always much more fun than returning home.
Especially when returning to Paris.
Ah, Paris.
If you lift your bust over the ocean, you'll see, my dear sir,
that Brazil will appear in the form of a harp or a ham,
contained at the rear by the supremely high foothills of the Andes.
Even birds have trouble going over them.
What a marvel!
The Sugar Loaf is entirely artificial!
What a marvel!
In Brazil, the women are so chic that they're not content with taffeta.
They adorn themselves with so many jewels,
that it's as if there had rained down about their heads and necks
showers of pearls, rubies and diamonds.
They're all so exquisite.
The Indians don't have the verb “to be.”
Therein lies the metaphysical difficulty in making moral beings out of them.
The most you can get is a suckling Christian.
The land where people are born with tails. Or rabo as you say.
Tails? All people have a tail, dear sir.
What distinguishes us is the use we make of it.
Surely, dear madam.
As Montaigne said, “We're all animals.”
Not everyone, dear sir.
In our country, Blaise, there's an animal called the sloth.
His neck hairs stand on end,
and he moves so slowly
that even when hurried,
in 15 days, he cannot surpass the range of a child's stone toss.
But we also have the eagle of the sertéao.
And rheas so big that with their wings lifted high
the enormous sails run off in the wind.
Even St. Domingo himself ended up losing patience.
He said, “Seeing as how you refuse to hear my pleas
it will take a real drubbing for me to convert you.”
It seems the Indians are sad people, aren't they?
All animals are sad post-coitum.
It's a universal rule.
Our famous Duchess of Santos should know.
Remember Our Lord.
He lived in Jerusalem and other great cities.
He only passed through the smaller ones.
Four centuries of cow meat! Scandalous!
Let's have frog's legs, dear.
They're delicious when they don't overdo the garlic.
As for the widows,
they are one of our principal sources of income.
To rich widows, we must always exaggerate our difficulties.
Thus, we may draw considerable sums and alms from them.
Even if we must resort to violence.
The champagne in Paris seems to contain much less alcohol.
How beautiful! It must be delicious.
-Get that beast out of here! -Here comes our food, hopping!
“Tupi or not Tupi, that is the question!”
To be or not to be Tupi, that is the question!
Down with spiritual dictators!
What matters now are dentures!
Freedom for frogs!
Have mercy.
The Indians did not practice mercy,
only contempt!
Hans Staden saved himself by crying.
Your Archbishop “Sardinha”, as manly as he was,
was eaten alive.
Not from behind, surely.
Brazilians!
Only anthropophagy unites us!
We're all man-eaters!
Anthropophagy results from scarcity of fauna.
Anthropophagy is the basis of the instinctive aesthetic of Brazil.
The reduction to rubbish of imported idols.
The totemic ascension of the national revelry!
I want to be crowned Queen of the Anthropophagous!
Leave it to us.
Gentlemen! There has never existed the highest religion or ideal,
that has not been disputed through blows.
Historically!
Down with Father Vieira, author of our first foreign loan to get a commission.
Down with the low anthropophagy
clustered in the sins of catechism.
We'll attack the dove of peace!
At times, I think that God, when planning to flood the earth,
committed his only error:
Noah!
I decided to leave at once.
Poetry today is exploding in the entire world.
I came to live a generous adventure.
You're fortunate not to have a bookish past.
In the end, what are three or four centuries of history
compared to this savage and prolific continent?
Simply the exact time required for the worms to devour the libraries
and for men to knock down jungles and to reproduce.
Down with theories. Civilization is this:
The establishment of man in a climate, come what may.
When purchasing land, always use a friend's name
who's trustworthy and secretive,
all the better to show our poverty.
-Please, don't touch this. -Don't you worry. It's just a formality.
They're only liturgical objects. No value whatsoever.
-The law is the same for all. -Please don't open that.
-Please. -You have objects of great value here.
Please, they're instruments of discipline.
-Only 30 bottles of perfume! -Doesn't matter.
You still have to declare them and pay the tax.
-Sir, let's settle this between us. -Afterwards.
-You can't enter the country! -What's this?
Brazil needs manual labor!
You're missing an arm. You can't enter!
Let go! What a lack of respect!
How absurd!
He's a poet, a French intellectual!
He's not a worker.
-And what if he was, you creep? -Out of the way, hussy!
He's not an immigrant. He's a tourist.
Only in Brazil.
Disgusting country!
Please, do come in. A Frenchman, here at my home.
What a day to be remembered!
-My... Pardon me. -Don't worry.
My happiness, dear sir, is limitless.
Firstly, because you're a poet. Secondly, French.
I adore France.
-But no Frenchman has ever come here. -Never?
You're the first!
Please make yourself at home. My house is yours.
Breno will provide you with whatever you need.
This is such a great honor for me.
-Please allow me to take some air. -Of course.
We'll meet afterwards. We have a lot to talk about.
Thank you. You're very kind.
Thank you.
Breno, I'd like to take a bath, if that's possible.
Master Padroso is quite nervous. Understandably so.
I too love France, Monsieur Blaise.
My daughter was to be called, “Battle of the Marne,”
but unfortunately, she ended up as “Joffrinette.”
Arriving at this hour was not very considerate to Mr. Padroso.
No, not to worry, sir.
Master Padroso has no set hours.
Sometimes he dines at 2:00 a.m.
We're accustomed to it. He's sublunar.
Somnambulist you mean.
No, sublunar.
It's the moon that makes him walk.
Breno, answer me frankly.
What's the animal that's crouching on my bed?
You noticed it?
Something there is spying on us, stirring.
Don't say its name. The creature is listening to us.
It's a rattlesnake, queen of this plantation.
Breno, please fetch my white suit.
Master Padroso must be waiting.
You're finally here, my dear friend.
Come.
I wish to show you my discovery, a new constellation.
I want to entrust you with a favor.
Please do me the courtesy of registering my discovery officially in Paris.
You understand, it's something I want to do before I die.
Behold. This is the supreme homage I pay to France
by finding the Eiffel Tower in our celestial hemisphere.
It's the spiritual projection of France today,
as I explained in my official notice to the Academy of Sciences.
-It's not merely a whim, you see. -Of course.
The institute didn't answer me! They didn't.
In spite of the documents I appended, such as the astronomical photos
which do not leave the slightest doubt as to the veracity of my discovery.
And all my annotated missives.
And all the memoranda that I've sent periodically
since the Battle of the Marne.
Come. Look!
Come and see with your own eyes.
The celestial Eiffel Tower.
What a marvel!
The grand scale is impressive.
It's dizzying to imagine that each one of these shrubs
paid for a new skyscraper in Sao Paulo,
that another brought to Santos a ship laden with all the luxuries of Europe.
It's incredible.
But why so much coffee?
Why this desperate need of intoxication
in every people and every era of history?
To each era, its own intoxicant.
As our modernist friends say,
the biggest thing now is the import-export of human meat.
Big iceboxes, great slaughterhouses,
and canned scoundrels.
Finally, the diversification of our exports.
The end of monoculture.
How could I not be a communist if I'm modern?
The proletariat prepares for the final assault.
While the rich attend the ball,
the humiliated servants, wearing bonnet and apron,
conspire in the kitchens.
The bourgeoisie wavers.
You're utterly wrong.
Not only in art. Also in life.
You're the excruciating petit-bourgeoisie.
Such a heart, too alive to stagnate.
Rosa. I'm the product of feudal upbringing in the midst of the 20th century!
That wooden plank you're sitting on...
is very insensitive, Rosa.
You must understand art through its material causes.
Modernism is the bourgeois golden age of the first coffee given market value,
a movement created by you, people exactly like coffee,
whose value is purely artificial.
Imagine. We are the anonymous artists of the revolution.
A petit-bourgeois like you, Marxist by accident,
will at most be towed along by the proletariat.
Be careful. I'll jump.
Life is the conflict between classes.
My God, the archangels' revolt was the first class struggle!
-Rosa, will you fuck me? -Us!
The sexual question is secondary.
Rosa, what do you think about anthropophagy?
-I don't think, I like. -Yes.
And modernism?
It's like the price of coffee. Right now it's low.
I feel middle class, between the hammer and the sickle.
What growing sexuality!
Branca Clara,
the Brazilwood Movement was export poetry
against import-colonization.
Anthropophagy is the ideological apex.
The wave that crests in the direction of the future!
Dearest, not everything that grows is soft.
Therefore, brazilwood above all.
Governor, I didn't come to Brazil to make films.
On the contrary, I didn't even want to hear about it.
But with every step, traveling through this marvelous country,
I said to my companions,
“It's so beautiful, so spectacular.
No one can imagine a country like this.”
Silence! Beware of the dog!
Careful of the slope. Slow down.
Be careful with this shit! Watch the hole!
I told you to be careful! Watch the hole, I said!
I told you! Who dug this hole?
After the grand tour I took through the countryside,
I returned so charmed that I bought a virgin forest.
Not for profit or speculation, but with the intent of returning.
Upon my return to France, I'll seek the capital that allows me to return
and make a film in this country, a propaganda film.
-Independence or Death! -Long Live Brazil!
A great documentary that faithfully captures reality.
My stars will be the great stars of Brazil,
nature, light, the virgin forests
and one of those giant rivers, like the Tieté,
which historically was the way to penetrate the forest.
I have heard, Governor, that you have an obsession.
Namely, history.
A friend told me that your doctoral thesis
traced out the history of a family in Sao Paulo.
I've read it.
Would you permit me to use it as the plot of my film?
Mr. Blaise,
not only may you use my modest study as the plot of your film,
but it's also a point of honor for me to finance your project completely.
After all, it's a 100-percent Brazilian film.
Alerted to this matter by friends,
I took the liberty of having the treasury secretary prepare a bond
in the value of 50 million from the state treasury
which it will be my pleasure to sign and deliver to you now.
This is a fucking secret mission!
We can't reach the capital building from here,
but the defense department is right in our sights.
Captain, isn't this is a mission for our double agent?
A military mutiny?
They're going to shell the capital?
The only safe place is the defense department?
Let's go there immediately.
This is the first time in the history of ballistics
that instead of the bullet seeking the target,
it is the target seeking the bullet!
This crap was never a true revolution.
On both sides, all of them hold mutual shares in the same interests.
Stockholders in the same bankrupt masses.
You must choose and position yourselves clearly on the side of the exploited,
against the great parasitical trusts
that live off of the Turkish baths of working people.
You believed in the drama of high society.
You've contaminated yourselves,
gotten bogged down in the mud of this perverse bourgeoisie,
which nowadays hardly defends itself.
It's true. I will have no more of it! I quit!
Today, a day to be remembered,
we liberate ourselves forever from two great cows:
-Branca Clara. -And the bourgeoisie!
Bravo, comrades!
We're here.
Here, take this.
-Our daily bread. -Isn't my poverty beautiful?
It's beautiful, Cesar. I never want to leave here.
There's nothing better in this world than revolutionary grub at Cesar's.
Very good.
And some people say that this is no house, but a chicken coop.
Comrades, our two friends here,
until today, were clowns of the bourgeoisie!
Bearded in London,
I ran into Karl Marx, not knowing that he existed.
Many times, I got bogged down in the trenches of the social reactionaries!
For me, the opposite of the bourgeois wasn't the proletariat, but the Bohemian.
The epitaph of the man I was will be the obituary of the bourgeoisie!
Faggots, opportunists, rebels,
conservative and sexual,
now they will be at least the lancers of the proletarian revolution.
Yes, a heroic task for he who was once altar boy,
who square-danced in the countryside,
and dressed up as a Turk aboard a cruise.
I know the road to follow is hard
with the weight of innumerable hesitations.
But turning back is impossible.
My watch only marches forward, and history as well!
My sons, Marx and Engels.
Comrades, imperialism defends itself.
They want to smother the revolt that the exploited lead into battle.
The United States sends us movies.
England, soccer.
Italy, priests.
And France, prostitution!
Comrades, is “sucking” imperialism?
Come on, comrade!
From now on we must be more serious. The battle draws near!
This comrade wants to sow division among us.
He wants to demoralize our blocks and take control of our strike.
We must unmask bossism within the labor movement!
The bourgeois avant-garde infiltrates the proletariat organizations,
under the name of leftist opposition.
Comrades!
We must avoid ideological immobility.
The bourgeoisie has lost its meaning.
Now it crumbles and divides.
The good bourgeois of today may be the revolutionary of tomorrow!
-What the hell? -Once bourgeois, always bourgeois.
Fucking hell.
Comrades!
I've given up for good the filthy morals and politics of the bourgeoisie.
In battle I will prove that this is true!
Comrades, calm down.
Your political line is perfect!
Strike! Strike! Strike!
We're here to strike! It will not be postponed!
My friends,
the bosses take the bread from our mouths, cut our wages!
We can't allow that!
Our kids are going hungry. Strike!
Comrades, it is time to fight!
At night, we don't even have the strength to cradle our kids.
But we will not weaken the strike with our sorrows!
We must unite with our companions
against the bourgeoisie who turn us into human rags
and take from our breast the last drop of milk for our children
to live on champagne and parasitism!
Dear comrades,
our wages are late.
Our bosses live luxuriously,
but we won't be slaves forever!
That's right. I second that. Very good!
The bourgeoisie defend themselves with armed lackeys.
But we also have someone to defend us:
Ourselves, the proletariat of the entire world!
Comrades, let us form an iron front against the bourgeoisie!
Police repression incites us to fight!
For freedom!
For the freedom of our friends in prison!
Strike!
Comrades, a general strike
against the bourgeoisie and their armed lackeys!
Soldiers, do not shoot your brothers!
Turn your arms against the officers!
They kill the workers, but the proletariat won't die!
Murderers! Sons of bitches!
Murderers!
Rosa, you must know the story of the old woman
who wouldn't open the door thinking it was the landlord,
when in fact it was a good friend
bringing her a great sum of money.
I know you won't refuse to hear the word of God.
Open the door.
I'm warning you. You'd better not go inside.
You know,
at the funeral of that black man who died at the meeting,
there was nobody there.
Inspector, at Christ's funeral, only three people went.
I'm warning you. Enter at your own risk. You're the one who's responsible.
Everyone has sinned, Rosa Lituana.
You're no exception, nor I.
When you ask what to do in today's world,
what to do with your life...
the Bible has a diagnosis.
Here in the Bible it says,
“The importance is in good works.
Not all who say unto me, Lord...”
She's crazy! Dangerous. Violent.
Let her be, you witch!
Away from the girl!
Rosa, I'll get you out of here.
The lyrical catacombs either expend themselves
or flow into the political trenches.
Get into your tanks, you fucking intellectuals!
Joy is the irrefutable proof!
Do you like beer?
To sell. I only drink champagne.
I'm like my friend, Ford, who only drives Rolls Royces.
Sir, pardon my timidity.
Cleopatra, the queen of this whorehouse!
My only regret is that Cleopatra didn't rule over Greece.
Man conquered woman, and she crowned his head!
Spermatozoids, behold your prison!
This rubber before us. How I wish I'd invented it!
What's this henhouse?
The first to speak will get a cannonball up his ass!
Silence, you cows! Today, nobody fucks!
Not even up the ass!
We haven't even earned enough for dinner yet!
“Have mercy on the whores.
Give us today our daily cock.
Remember you too are paid to screw.”
Oh, gonorrhea!
Clap! Cancer!
We must regulate this profession!
You fucking fairies!
The purpose of a woman is not to fuck nor to give birth!
It's to salute the flag.
Remember your aunts, the Amazons,
your grandmother, Joan of Arc,
and our own Brazilian heroine, Miss Pulquéria,
who alone, breastfed 18 sergeants during the Paraguayan War.
Get a lifesaver. We gotta jump in the water.
Sailors! Know how to fuck?
Yeah!
Then you know how to eat. To eat and to fuck, all men are prepared.
We're out of ether. Garcon, whiskey!
Sailors, rise up!
The spirit of revolt has come to the depths of the furnaces
where you toast your veins.
Now it is your turn to dance, and you, bosses, get to work!
Hooray!
I'm calling the police!
Form a militia of rich men's sons.
Socialism is Soviet power plus electrification.
The naval aviation force has abandoned us.
The decadence of monogamous marriage,
the ruin of bourgeois morals.
It was clear that liberation was at hand!
Down with the moral oppression of clothes!
What conceals the truth is clothing!
I'm a nudist for hygiene.
What an idea!
Get into the water to expose ideas!
From the country horse to horsepower,
from one animal to another.
That's the great Leninist metaphor.
This bastard will pay. He destroyed two bungalows of mine.
We must take measures before it's too late.
Today I received a call at 2:00 a.m. You know why?
To tell me to fuck off.
Covet not thy neighbor's wife or husband.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not use my name in vain.
Thou shalt love God above all.
Let peace be with you!
Christ indoctrinating the natives!
Sailors, catch them.
This man introduced the supernatural into procreation!
You can't deny that the Sermon on the Mount
was a blatant provocation.
It made way for the Roman Empire.
You can't deny your secret relations with Pontius Pilate.
You were all stakeholders in the olive oil monopoly.
I only wanted goodness.
Then explain this text, Matthew 5, Verse 35:
“Agree with thine adversary quickly, lest thou be cast into prison.”
I taught, “If someone should smite thee on the cheek, turn to him the other.”
In political language, that means,
“If the Romans take Judea, give them Galilee too!”
At the meeting in Gethsemane when a self-defense group led by Peter
tore off the ear of the pig who arrested you,
you put it back in place.
-You! -You!
Religion isn't even madness, it's a con game.
Not this!
-Cut the magic. -Let's get out of here.
Idiotic magic. Oldest trick in the book.
What's required is to create, through pederasty,
friendships and vigorous relationships.
Impossible.
Between the cock and the asshole,
they've erected a veritable wall.
We"ve captured the fiancée of the unknown soldier!
What a great catch!
Kneel.
I wouldn't fuck you for anything.
I can wait. This is hard as a rock. Take her!
And who is this little bourgeoise?
Lil' Mariana.
-Age? -20.
What's your greatest defect?
I'm capricious.
What should we instill in children?
Religious ideas.
What's your ideal?
To own a convertible.
What leads a country to ruin?
Revolution.
What do you want to be?
An envied woman.
What's your favorite pastime?
Dancing.
What's jealousy?
Without jealousy, there's no love.
What bothers you the most?
Having to work.
There. The transformation of sweat into cocktail.
Christ, at least, was the son of a mother.
Yes, because the Holy Ghost is the tribal prick.
Here we'll build socialism.
Contests of laying hens, heated stables,
daily work in the snows of springtime or the heat of summer.
Neither love for country, nor God, nor honest hypocrisy,
but flocks that organize themselves.
The tractor, the tragedy of the collective milk skimmer,
the end of magic.
Without mystery, nothing happens, without magic, without cheating.
Long live the matriarchy!
Woman giving orders and fucking man.
The dogma of the immaculate revolution is proclaimed.
We shall erect here the society of desire.
The empty cock!
Fuck him! Rip his cock off!
No, wait. Calm down. Let's talk.
No biting! No biting!
We"ll start the “Caraiba” revolution.
Bigger than the French, Bolshevist and Surrealist revolutions combined!
Let's start a revolution...
and shove it up your ass!
The Brazilwood Man was restored
using the complete and well preserved original negatives.
A reserve print generated the master for the sound restoration.
The original film sync was retained.
2K digital restoration was completed in Sao Paulo in August, 2006.