O Cangaceiro

Beautifully photographed, this Brazilian variation on the western is a strange mix. On the positive sides the images are very striking, and there are scenes of emotional intensity and violence, especially around the film's climax that are amazingly well staged and acted.

On the other hand, there's not a lot of depth to any of the characters or their motivations. They're more archetypes than full people. (It also falls into that cliché of the better looking an actor is, the better human being his character is.) Certainly that's common in this genre, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

The story is nothing that new. Yet it's presented with a fierceness and focus that makes it very watchable. These bandit anti-heroes are hard men with hard hearts. Their violence is still disturbing, even by modern standards.

The much discussed music fell on both sides of the fence to me. The score, which includes a lot of songs, is sometimes quite a haunting partner to the striking images. But at other times, when the group of bandits whose story this is fall into singing and dancing in ways that feel more akin to a musical than a gritty, violent western, the effect was odd and disconcerting, almost unintentionally comic. But that might just be a cultural bias - it took me a while to get used to the musical numbers in Bollywood films, for example.

Overall, this was a film I was glad I got to see, and would like to see again for its imagery. Also, now that I understand its style, some of the cultural quirks would be less likely to throw me off balance.

Like the few great sci-fi, western, and other genre films, O Cangaceiro transcends its genre to speak of integrity and how people deal with awful contradictions and dilemmas that develop in their lives. Sometimes unsuccessfully.

But don't let my fancy talk deter you; it's a great movie and if somehow you have a chance to see it, don't miss it. It is a three-star attraction (meaning, "worth a trip.")

To meet the IMDb's length requirement, I'll also note its poetic photography, deservedly famous background music, and the cool, restrained treatment (aided by the b&w photography) of deep emotions and tragic events.

I saw this film at the Carnegie Cinema in NYC 50 years ago and still remember it. It was beautifully filmed. Aside from the plot, the background music, O Canganceiro which is played as an instrumental and choral is absolutely haunting. The female lead was exceptionally beautiful. As I recall, the film was a minor sensation at the time, but has since disappeared into the mists of history. Too bad. Is it available anywhere today?

(the 10 line minimum doesn't make sense. Why should I be forced to pad my comments when brevity is the soul of wit. This was a simple film,that doesn't require complex, "filomatic" critical comment!)

Another great film that is characterised by a memorable music score. Not all films with great music are great films, but haunting or otherwise memorable scores are a feature of so many of the greatest films of all time - The Third Man, Jeux Interdits, High Noon, American Graffiti, most of the Kubrick opus, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and probably any documentary adopting Philip Glass' minimalism (The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War) being prominent examples. This is so even when the music is not original but simply selected and edited in from classical music, popular or folk songs, as appropriate and evocative. Bets are that you won't be able to get the title folk song of O Cangaceiro out of your head for some time after you've finished watching it - it seems to affect every viewer that way.

This is a film reminiscent of The Wages of Fear, in its portrayal of poverty and the brutality, especially towards women, traditionally endemic in South America. No wonder Claude Levi-Strauss entitled his seminal ethnographic work based on travels in South America "Tristes Tropiques".

I had been warned of the brutality of the horse-dragging scene in this film - yet I can only say that it pales into insignificance with the graphic closing horse-dragging scene of The Cowboys - when I guess John Wayne was, as his career closed, ever more drawn to reactionary law-and-order neanderthalism.

A melancholic film with great B/W cinematography and even better music, depicting that eternal South American atmosphere of brutality and tragic sadness. A rare film well worth watching.

This film was the first brazilian production exhibited internationally after receive a prize of Best Music at a Cannes Film Festival. It was distributed accross the world by Columbia Pictures and was very successful at the box office.

I understand why foreign audiences still enjoy it, but for us brazilians it's very artificial when the hero leaves the semi arid background where the bandits live and penetrates a deep jungle to fight a jaguar etc, since those geographical regions are separated by hundred and hundred miles, like Arizona from Oregon. Anyway the music is amazing as the photography and the actor who plays captain Galdino ( Milton Ribeiro ). I believe that the main influence of director Lima Barreto was not the american westerns as most of people say, but the mexican films of Emilio Fernandez like "Enamorada". "O cangacero" is a good film, even if not not a great one and deserves the fame it has.