O anjo nasceu

O anjo nasceu was the film that propelled Júlio Bressane forward as one of the most inventive ‘auteurs’ of Brazilian cinema. Made in 1969, at the same time as Matou a família e foi ao cinema, the film – as if it was some seminal extract – methodically and iconoclastically summarises a transgression of dominant conventions. The episodic narrative follows the desperate path of two hoodlums (one is black, the other white, in a ‘black-and-white’ film) and their gratuitous crimes. Clots of aborted action occur in a diegetic void. The film draws attention to the shredded fracturing of its language and constantly re-affirms its anti-illusionist breaking of conventions. The extended lengths of the shots – with the unsynchronised sound as counter-point – propose a different notion of the experience of time. The end of the film is anthological: as if it were enraptured by the ‘baiao’ (blues) of country singer Luis Gonzaga, the ‘unending’ shot of an empty road (which ends up in a zoom over its opaque surface) mocks the often repeated and teleological allegory of ‘the road’ in the films of the Cinema Novo. Its final moments push that effect further. The ambiguous zoom ends up on the actual material surface of the image, thus emphasising the limited perspective and the lack of focus on experience. (Carlos Adriano)