canto saudade

Canto da Saudade (1952)
Humberto Mauro


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044470


Humberto Mauro, the founder of brazilian cinema - retrospective

Humberto Mauro was, without a doubt, the most important brazilian filmmaker during the first half of the 20th century, having inffluenced directors such as Mario Peixoto (Limite), Nelson Pereira dos Santos (Vidas Secas) and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade (O Padre e a Moça).

Making cinema from the small town of Cataguases, MG, he managed to show in the screen a country that was growing, becoming modern and urban, but still largely attached to rural lifestyle. It is impossible to think of Mauro and not link his works with those of writers such as João Guimarães Rosa and Gilberto Freyre. Lots of beautiful shots of the brailian countryside, arranged eith great photographt and a good montage. It does have and amateur-ish feel, after all he was starting brazilian cinema from scratch, but this is shadowed by Mauro's unique sensibility.

from link
The first great master of the silent screen. From Volta Grande in Minas Gerais, Humberto Mauro (1897-1983) spent his youth in Cataguases, where he was a self-employed mechanic, practised as a radio amateur and started an artistic career, first in theatre as an amateur actor and then as author of a comic short feature, Valadião, o Cratera (1925), shot with a Baby-Pathé 9.5mm camera. In partnership with an Italian immigrant well-versed in photography, Pedro Comello, he founded the Sul América Film company, and subsequently, aided by two local traders, created Febo Filme, which marked the entry of cinema into the vanguard movement of Cataguases. Influenced by the American filmmakers David W. Griffith and Henry King, he invented the Brazilian lyric cinema. His first feature length films - Na Primavera da Vida (In the Springtime of Life, 1926), Tesouro Perdido (Lost Treasure, 1927), Brasa Dormida (Sleeping Ember, 1928) and Sangue Mineiro (Blood of Minas, 1929) - are pastoral works shaped and dramatized by valleys, brooks and waterfalls, elements which also mark the hundreds of documentaries which he would make between 1936 and 1964, for the Institute of Educational Cinema, of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

O Canto da Saudade (1952)
O Canto da Saudade, or "The Song of Yearning", Humberto Mauro's last feature-lenght film, is said to be a return to the director's 1920's work, meaning it is a bucolical, countryside oriented, lyrical picture. In this sense, we can say it is a properly-titled film, because it is a return not only to his cinematic roots, but also to his home town of Volta Grande, where the movie was made. On the other hand, this feature reveals the inffluence of Mauro's documentary work at INCE, right from the start, when he claims to feel the need to register Minas' countryside lifestyle in a picture. Also, lots of music, specially traditional music, something we can relate directly to his Brasilianas series.

It received mixed reviews when it first came out, because, altough the movie was much appreciated (two Saci prizes, the most important award for brazilian cinema at the time), and although Mauro's work was being rediscovered by a new generation, it had a strong political bias, towards populist president Getúlio Vargas.

from IMDB:
Coronel Januário's daughter, Maria Fausta, is having a secret affair with João Galdino. While her father is engaged in his political campaign for mayor of the city, the couple disappear. Galdino, an accordionist who is secretly in love with her, goes looking for them.