Fragmentos da vida

Carlos Ferreiira was a boy when he saw his father die in a work accident. The man's last word were that honesty and hard work were the thing to do. But as Sao Paulo grows into a modern city, Ferreira does not follow the dead man's advice. Things are hard now for a panhandler, so he decides a vacation at government expense is the thing for him; a few weeks in a jail cell, with room and board would be ducky. But chance and the generosity of strangers confoundshim.

It's a pleasant comic short feature (forty minutes in all), and Ferreira's constant frustration is very amusing, especially as we watch his fellow bum, Jose Maria Fiho profit from Ferreira's efforts. In the end there is a message about waiting too long to turn your life around, but until it gets there, it's very enjoyable.

The copy I looked at was not in the best shape, nor were the titles translated into the best English, but they worked.

"Fragments of Life" presents a melodramatic, slightly amusing story of a tramp facing many adversities from life after failing to follow the advice of his father in becoming an honest hard-working man. Carlos Ferreira stars as the tramp (he also plays the father in the initial sequence), who fails in being a beggar along with a more experienced hobo (Alfredo Roussy) and he decides to create confusion in order to get arrested and spend some time in jail since while being there he'll have food and shelter for free without having to depend on the charity of strangers.

His plan makes sense and if considering the time where the story takes place, a more peaceful time in history with less criminals and less dangers than today, one could easily act with such intent, just to make a small offence and stay in prison for a while in order to get some benefits. And that's where the humor takes place: to each plan the man conceives and acts there's always so good unexpected reaction from everybody and he keeps on failing to get arrested. From eating a meal at a restaurant without paying to seducing a young woman, the tramp finds himself being more helped with the outcome not going his intended way yet he always get some positive result from it. But in time, he'll received the ultimate message back from the past in order to see life in a different perspective.

It's a small movie from the early days of Brazilian cinema and adapted from a story written by American author O. Henry. It's a tragic movie with some good dosis of humor, with an erratic wanderer who whenever he fails at something he end up winning everything. That's the real tragedy of such character, the sufferer of the worst tragedy of life: of being someone with eyes to see yet refuses to do so. It comes from a moralistic period but it serves its purpose in showing life as it is. Fine acting, and some solid acting despite being an old classic from the cinema era.

Gets a huge praise from me for surviving through it all, still existing when the majority of movies from the period disappeared from view. Thumbs way up! 10/10.