Deus e o diabloa na terra do sol
Brazil,
1964, 120 min
Shown in 1966 / 1997
CREDITS
- dir
-
Glauber Rocha
- prod
-
Glauber Rocha, Luiz Paulino Dos Santos, Luiz Augusto Mendes
- scr
-
Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima Jr., Paulo Gil Soares
- cam
-
Waldemar Lima
- editor
-
Rafael Justo Valverde
- mus
-
Sérgio Ricardo, Glauber Rocha
- cast
-
Yona Magalhaes, Geraldo del Rey, Othon Bastos, Mauricio de Valle, Lidio Silva
-
COMMENTS
Shown in Cinema Discoveries program, 1966 as The Black God and the White Devil. Also screened in the Indelible Images program, 1997, selected by Francis Ford Coppola.
In 1966, a Brazilian feature was brought to the attention of the Festival after all the selections had been made. However, the quality and the subject matter of The Black God and the White Devil were so exceptional that a special afternoon screening was arranged. Since then, Glauber Rocha has achieved international acclaim. In the barren hinterlands of northeastern Brazil, faith and superstition have been preserved through generations by self-proclaimed prophets who preach religious survivalism. With the aid of off-camera troubadours, Rocha tells of the struggle of Manuel, an oppressed cowhand who seeks salvation first as a devoted follower of Sebastian, a black religious mystic, and then as a partner of Corisco, one of the last of the fierce outlaws battling the wealthy landowners. But tragedy is inevitable after Manuel murders a rancher who tries to rob him. He finds himself alone when his wife kills Sebastian, his spiritual helper, and a hired gun dispatches Corisco, his worldly protector. Gerardo del Ray gives a powerful performance as the driven, illiterate and confused peasant for whom there is no salvation. Mystically stylized and reverberating with millennial malice, The Black God and the White Devil—with its broodingly obvious parallels to Biblical events and theatrically savage outlaws—is a fascinating allegory that echoes the conflict between superstition and religious doctrine, hope and despair. “The earth belongs to man,” is Rocha’s final proclamation, “not God or the Devil.”
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #49
Some of the filmmakers whose works screened in our New Directors series include Cinda Firestone, Susan Sontag, Shu Shuen, Conrad Rooks, Shirley Clarke, Sandro Franchina, and Mitsuo Yanagimachi. This series, which began in 1965, was a predecessor to the New Directors series at Lincoln Center, which started in 1971.
