Nordesterns - Damned Brazilian Westerns!
by Andre Soares
The film series "Malditos Filmes Brasileiros!" (Damned Brazilian Movies!) continues in September at the Casa França-Brasil in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The theme of the month is the Brazilian "nordestern," also known as the feijoada Western: shoot-em-up flicks shot (no pun intended) in the arid and lawless Brazilian Northeast, where men were born to kill or die, and women were born to get raped and do crochet.
Among the scheduled screenings are Carlos Coimbra’s epoch-making A Morte Comanda o Cangaço (Death Rules the Lawlessness, 1960), a well-received nordestern that became a sizable box-office hit in Brazil; Wilson Silva’s Nordeste Sangrento (Bloody Northeast, 1963), about religious fanaticism in the holy city of Juazeiro; and Tião Valadares and (an uncredited) Rajá de Aragão’s O Cangaceiro do Diabo (The Devil’s Bandit, 1981), a no-budget production that, according to the series’ organizers, "is a serious candidate for the title of worst nordestern ever made."
Nothing that would make John Ford jealous, perhaps, but these films will probably appeal to those who enjoy their hangings, shoot-outs, and rapes accompanied by a large degree of technical ineptitude.
Malditos Filmes Brasileiros! site
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