Cinema
The Circus
Saltimbancos
Manuel Guimarães · 1951
Synopsis
The Cirque Merveilles is small, old and poor. Tony, a trapeze artist, gets himself hired there. A storm carries off the big top; he stays all the same, for the beautiful Belmira, who would be a horse rider if the horse had not been sold. The troupe performs in the open air, sleeps under the stars, counts every coin, and sets its mind on buying back a canvas.
Context
The film takes the opposite course to the comedy that then held the country's screens: it comes from neorealism, that of Portuguese writers as much as that of the postwar Italian school. It is based on the novel O Circo by Leão Penedo, who wrote the screenplay, and its production manager, Rogério de Freitas, belonged to the same milieu. The circus then served as a figure for the instability of the poorest under the dictatorship: Manoel de Oliveira had prepared in 1944 a project of the same kind, never shot, of which location photographs survive. The censors mutilated the film, critics were divided and the reception was weak.
Who it is for
A black and white feature film in Portuguese, of about an hour and a half, from which the censors cut passages on its release.
Prizes and reception
Its author's first feature film, praised by the neorealist writers, and one of the first Portuguese films to turn its back on popular comedy.
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