THE CANNIBALS


Title   Cast   Director   Year Shown  Other Info    Country  Notes 


Os canibais

Portugal, 1988, 90 min

Shown in 1989 / 1994

CREDITS

dir
Manoel de Oliveira
prod
Paulo Branco
scr
Manoel de Oliveira
cam
Mário Barroso
editor
Manoel de Oliveira, Sabine Franel
cast
Luis Miguel Cintra, Leonor Silveira, Diogo Dória, Oliveira Lopes

OTHER

prod co
Filmaargem; Gemini Films
source
Portuguese Film Institute

COMMENTS

Manoel de Oliveira received the Akira Kurosawa Award in 1994; he appeared in person.
The Cannibals

In the last decade, Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira has won belated recognition among cinephiles as one of the most consistently innovative talents in contemporary world cinema. This latest work by the 80-year-old master has been widely hailed as “the most youthful film of the year.” “De Oliveira’s latest teaser (and it does tease and usurp the audience’s expectations in the wickedest way) is a kind of opera about the wedding of a rather gloomy-looking Viscount to a beautiful lady, while a Don Juan figure looks on enviously from the sidelines. The first part deliberately exploits all the most tedious operatic conventions, but patience is rewarded in the second half with a series of grotesque happenings (which should not be revealed in a synopsis) involving a well-cooked roast which is not what it seems and an outbreak of anarchy which makes Buñuel look rather reserved. De Oliveira, in fact, is sending up all kinds of conventions (literary and operatic). It is also his most sumptuous production to date, with outstanding color, costuming and period design. Rich and strange indeed.”

—John Gillett, London Film Festival