Here is a novelty in the Portuguese cinema: the Remake . Apart from the case of films adapted from literary works, where extreme case are the four Doomed Love of Pallu, Lopes Ribeiro, Oliveira and Mario Barroso, do not occur earlier.
But there will be, very soon after: this Patio of Songs “reloaded” inaugurates a series of three films that also includes always the hand of Leonel Vieira, the “updates” of The Lion Star (Arthur Duarte, 1947) and The Song of Lisbon (Cottinelli Telmo, 1933).
Reach remake of these securities is not without a certain logic. For decades, the Portuguese cinema trying to replicate the formula of popular comedies of the so-called “golden age” of the 30s and 40s (which basically comes down to a half-dozen films), normally with disastrous results.
The Portuguese cinema does not produce a decent comedy since these films, just, and there would be a lot to add to the above cited: The Tyrant Father (Lopes Ribeiro, 1941), The Coast Castle (Duarte, 1943), The Radio Girl (Duarte, 1944) and certainly not more. At the entrance in the 50 formula was spent, and even a famous movie like The Coast of Africa (John Mendes, 1954) was already a parched thing and desengraçada, and from then on nothing has improved as well on the contrary. Back to these films to harvest them direct inspiration seems so logical as it seems a desperate gesture. Sink or swim
Racha. This “update” of The Courtyard of the Cantigas , whose original version, released in 1942, had the engine collaboration between the brothers Lopes Ribeiro (produced António Francisco, said Riverside, held, and both wrote the argument), it is heartbreaking.
If the original was an idealized and typified view of life in a popular Lisbon neighborhood that probably no longer exist or never existed, as the film shown, this version 2015 tries make a sort of squaring the circle:. preserve it, the mythology of “castiço” and introduce you touches of “realism” Contemporary
We have so much television where before there was only radio, we have a driver tuk tuks , we have a grocery gourmet in place of the old tavern Evaristo, we have a group of Spanish tourists now look gay now not we an Indian immigrant family to signal the cosmopolitanism that did not exist in Lisbon 40
product placement the squeegees:. the sponsors of the film are well represented, CTT (the character a postman) to RTP (the television that everyone sees, with well framed soon), through Sagres (apparently there in that courtyard, another brand of beer). So far so OK, or more or less. The worst, then, is that soon the film – which preserves the general features of the original argument and its multiple characters and parallel plots – proves unable to cope with so much, so much character, so much ball in the intrigue. A succession of loose scenes, the comic effects like wink, a narrative progression increasingly disjointed and, strictly speaking, no sense of economy. And then worse.
Up to two thirds of its length The Courtyard of the Cantigas is only weakly but within its huge limit, consistent. From one point is worth all brought mouxe, to the unspeakable (and almost random) end, with all the characters in a musical number in Bollywood style. Very typical . It could be ironic, but there is in the film a single sign away to show the irony. ? And the actors, without which (without the likes of Antonio Silva and Vasco Santana) would never have been “golden age”
No one here – neither they nor they apparently known figures in the television universe and magazine covers – seems fitted with any grace or special charisma. Save up Anabela Moreira and Rui Unas, especially Miguel Guilherme, the only actor who can imagine to imitate Antonio Silva and do not go wrong. But neither he prevents disaster. There is only one positive thing to say the film, which reveals intelligence by obviously be resolved: never hears the most famous taken from the original, “ò Evaristo, here you have it?”
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