os verdes anos (w&d paulo rocha, w. nuno bragança)

Os Verdes Anos, Rocha’s first film, is an effortless, affectionate dive into the emerging Lisbon of the early sixties. Julio, a winsome lad from the provinces, comes to the big city at the invitation of his uncle. He gets a job at a cobblers and falls for Ilda, who works as a maid for a wealthy family. Their nascent love affair, perfectly captured by the fine-honed screenplay, plays out as an inspiring model and cautionary tale. Julio is gauche,  but gradually begins to find his feet and his manhood. Ilda has ambitions to change her station, ambitions which her wit and beauty more than justify. Will they find a way to construct a future or will the big city swallow them up? The narrative is rendered with such unfettered charm that their story seduces, no matter the resolution. This charm lies in the pared back dialogue, the remarkable cinematography of Luc Mirot and the beguiling score by Carlos Paredes. One instantly understands how Os Verdes Anos thrust Rocha to the forefront of European cinema. The theme of a rural soul coming to the big city echoes Chabrol’s Les Cousins, and the way the film captures urban life is reminiscent of the nascent films of Godard, Iosseliani and others. That movement from the rural to the urban feels as though it has more or less played itself out in Europe. The contemporary version of this journey is one of immigration from the south or the third world to the fortresses of the western economies. 

mudar de vida (w&d paulo rocha, w. antónio reis)

Rocha’s 1966 offering is a beautifully shot tale neo-realist tale set on the Portuguese coast. Adelino has returned after years in exile in Angola. The coastal community he returns to is desperately poor, and his former sweetheart is now married to his brother. He returns to his former life, labouring and working on the fishing boats that crest the Atlantic, but the hardship of this life is destroying his health. He falls in with a younger woman and begins a tremulous affair with her, which arouses the ire of a conservative community. The film ends with the couple looking as though they are on the point of perhaps leaving together to start a life somewhere else. The narrative is very much in the Neo-realist vein. The images of the fishermen rowing on the open sea and bringing in  the boats and the nets are shot with an urgent, vivid clarity. There is one devastating scene where the family’s beachfront timber house begins to collapse as the high tides undermine the wooden scaffolding that holds it up. People scramble to break it down and recover anything they can, including the timber. It’s an astonishing scene of coastal erosion. Other scenes of the villagers participating in the local festivities are just as brilliantly shot and the film builds up a compelling vision of this impoverished seaside community. It felt curious watching it to think how this world would transform in the second half of the twentieth century with the arrival of mass tourism. The insidious poverty would presumably be alleviated, and this landscape which in the film is harsh and unforgiving would soon come to seen idyllic to German and British visitors. As such the film offers a fascinating portrayal of the transformation of Europe over course of the past fifty years (my lifetime), both in terms of labour and comfort, and consciousness. That which was considered abrasive and harsh is transformed into the supposedly idyllic. What has subsequently befallen the communities Rocha depicts would be fascinating to discover. Have they survived or has tourism hollowed them out?