The greatest director of the early Brazilian
cinema, Humberto Mauro was born on April 30, 1897, on a farm in Volta Grande
in the state of Minas Gerais. His father was an Italian immigrant and his
mother a native of Minas Gerais. In his early years, he had a particular
interest in both music and mechanics, playing the violin and the mandolin
and studying engineering at a school in the city of Belo Horizonte. He
left the school after one year to join his family in the town of Cataguases
where they now resided. With electricity then starting to spread into the
Brazilian interior, a technological revolution that attracted the interest
of the young Mauro, his first job was to install electricity in local farms.
He also built the first apparatus for radio reception in Cataguases. In
1916, he went to Rio de Janeiro where he worked for a time as an electrician,
returning to Cataguases in 1920. There he wed Dona Bebê (Maria Vilela
de Almeida) to whom he would remain married for the rest of his life.
Mauro became interested in photography, and
in 1923 his acquisition of a Kodak camera brought him into contact with
Pedro Cornello, an Italian immigrant who was the leading photographer in
Cataguases. The two, who struck up a close friendship, also shared a passion
for the cinema. Along with his fondness for American serial and adventure
films, Mauro was a great admirer of D. W. Griffith, Henry King, and King
Vidor. More and more, he began to think about the possibility of
making films himself. In 1925, Mauro and Cornello purchased a "Pathé-Baby"
9.5mm. home movie camera with which they made Valadião, o Cratera,
a five-minute adventure film with a comic element. By showing it to local
businessmen, they hoped to convince them to invest in establishing a production
company in Cataguases. With no large, centralized film industry in the
country at that time, the early Brazilian cinema experienced rapid artistic
growth in the 1920s through a proliferation of regional production centers.
For example, there was a notable series of silent films produced from 1923
to 1931 by a company based in Recife. In this climate, Mauro and Cornello
succeeded in obtaining financial backing for their venture from Homero
Cortes Domingues, a well-to-do trader in Cataguases. Mauro and Cornello
then purchased in Rio a 35mm. camera and hundreds of feet of film for shooting.
In Cataguases, they began making a film called Os Três Irmãos
(The Three Brothers) that was never completed. Towards the end of 1925,
Mauro, Cornello, and Domingues, receiving additional backing from businessman
Agenor Cortes de Barros, formally established their new Cataguases-based
production company, Phebo Sul America Film. The first feature film Mauro
directed for Phebo was Na Primavera da Vida (In the Spring of Life),
starring Pedro Cornello’s daughter, Eva Nil. From the beginning, Mauro
not only directed but frequently wrote or co-authored the scripts, acted
small parts, served as his own cameraman, and contributed to the set design
and lighting.
Following the release of Na Primavera da
Vida in 1926, Mauro began working on his second feature, Thesouro
Perdido (Lost Treasure). The film was first shown in Cataguases in
August 1927 and, upon its presentation in Rio de Janeiro, won an award
as the best Brazilian film of the year. With a cast that included Mauro’s
wife billed as Lola Lys in her only screen appearance, Thesouro Perdido
revealed
the remarkable cinematic skills of the self-taught filmmaker. Inspired
by American productions, the film is a melodramatic adventure story involving
bandits in search of a treasure map. The scenes in which they kidnap the
heroine and are confronted by the hero in a struggle to the death in a
burning cabin as the hero’s brother and friend ride to the rescue on horseback
demonstrate Mauro’s successful assimilation of his American contemporaries’
technique in creating heart-pounding excitement. The film, however, lacks
the erotic lyricism that would become a marked feature of Mauro’s vision.
At the same time, Mauro’s flair for staging dramatic scenes against a natural
background foreshadows his subsequent films.
In late 1927, Phebo Sul America Film was reorganized into a larger company
with many more backers and renamed Phebo Brasil Film. Mauro now had the
resources to create films in which he could fully develop his personal
vision. The first of these works was Braza Dormida (Sleeping Ember),
a classic film that advanced cinema art in Brazil. The film stars Luiz
Soroa and Nita Ney in the story of a young man from Rio who, down on his
luck in the capital, takes a job as manager of a sugar mill in the country,
where he finds love with the mill owner’s daughter. The former manager,
who had been demoted for incompetence, becomes jealous and tries to sabotage
the mill. The hero is moved to action and emerges victorious from their
battle to the death. In developing his narrative, Mauro greatly expanded
his range of expression and imagery. Shot by the outstanding cinematographer,
Edgar Brazil, the film makes striking use of the forest landscape, a backdrop
for the passionate romance of the hero and heroine. In a highly erotic
scene, rich in symbolism, they are startled by a snake hanging from the
branch of a tree while the villain covertly watches them. The struggle
between the hero and the villain in the sugar mill makes for an explosive
climax in a film of intense emotions. Through his mastery of cinematic
technique, including close-ups, editing, and dramatic natural backgrounds,
Mauro in Braza Dormida emerged as one of the foremost silent film
directors in the world. Released in March 1929, Braza Dormida was
distributed throughout Brazil by Universal Pictures and was an enormous
success at the box office.
After making a short documentary, Symphonia de Cataguases (1929),
Mauro directed his final production for Phebo,
Sangue Mineiro (Blood
of Minas Gerais), often ranked as the finest of his Cataguases films. It
was first shown in Cataguases in July 1929 and was released throughout
Brazil in the following year to critical and popular acclaim. For the first
time, Mauro worked with Carmen Santos, the actress who both starred in
Sangue
Mineiro and helped produce it. Santos gives a brilliant performance
as a millionaire’s beautiful young adoptive daughter who is driven to attempt
suicide when the man she loves is unfaithful to her. She wanders into the
countryside and tries to drown herself but is rescued by two young men
who are cousins. They take her to the cottage on their family farm where
she recovers. However, disillusioned by her bitter experience in love,
Carmen at first rejects the advances of one of the young men who rescued
her. The other also falls in love with her and comes to blows with his
cousin, even contemplating killing his rival. But his conscience wins out
and he never directly reveals to Carmen his true feelings for her. Carmen’s
now-penitent first love seeks to rekindle their romance, but she instead
chooses the rescuer who had declared his passion for her. As with Braza
Dormida, Mauro created a work of extraordinary quality through a sophisticated
film technique that included use of the moving camera and natural landscapes.
But whereas in the earlier production Mauro had emphasized the struggle
between the hero and the heavy, in Sangue Mineiro, a film with no
villains, his narrative focus is on the conflicts of the human heart. With
a story in which action is subordinate to character, he enriched the cinema
immeasurably, presenting on the screen people whose lives and passions
are intimately connected with their environment. Mauro accentuates his
belief in the redemptive power of nature by showing the transformation
of his heroine who, after fleeing her father’s mansion to die in the country,
finds a new life and love amidst the rustic simplicity of the farm.
Despite the success of Mauro’s films for Phebo, the company did not have
the resources to continue, with the technology of sound looming on the
horizon. Another pioneer Brazilian filmmaker, Jota Soares, who directed
for the Recife studio, years later characterized sound films as the guillotine
of the kind of local production that had flourished in Brazil during the
silent era. Fortunately for Mauro, a fresh opportunity quickly opened up
when his friend, Adhemar Gonzaga, invited him to direct for Cinédia,
a new production company in Rio de Janeiro he had formed. Gonzaga, whom
Mauro had known since he was the editor of the journal Cinearte,
put into practice his advocacy of a Brazilian national cinema when in 1929
he wrote and directed Barro Humano (Human Clay). The success of
this film enabled Gonzaga to form Cinédia and to plan as its first
production, Lábios sem Beijos (Lips Without Kisses). He began shooting
the film with Carmen Santos as the star, but production was stopped due
to Santos’s pregnancy. Gonzaga then turned the project over to Mauro who
began filming in March 1930 with a new cast headed by the seductive Lelita
Rosa and the dashing Paulo Morano. Mauro both directed and photographed
Lábios
sem Beijos, bringing his special magic to this silent film classic
adapted from Gonzaga’s original script. Although by 1930 sound was ascendant
in both the United States and Europe, Mauro, who was committed to the art
of silent cinema, continued to explore the full creative possibilities
of a visual language in the new film. This time, the mood of his film is
quite different from his previous work. With the urban sophisticated setting
of Rio de Janeiro as a backdrop, Lábios sem Beijos is a delightful
romantic comedy, dealing with the relationship between a wealthy, vivacious
society girl and a young man with the reputation of a Don Juan. The humorous
complications that follow are finally happily resolved. Despite the shift
to an urban setting, Mauro continues to emphasize the ties between man
and the natural world, as in the opening scenes of Rio amidst the wind
and rain and his many location shots of the city’s scenic beauties. In
the director’s characteristic style, the intense love scene between the
couple in a park is particularly sensuous. Throughout the film, Mauro experimented
with unusual camera movements and angles. In a climax marked by dynamic
editing, as the heroine races her car through the streets of Rio and into
the country, Mauro includes low-angle shots of her driving and, to convey
a feeling of rapid motion, employs what would appear to be a hand-held
camera while filming in front of, and behind, the car. Expressing a vibrant,
optimistic view of life, Lábios sem Beijos is a masterpiece
of the climactic era of silent cinema. Upon its release in November 1930,
it received an award from the Jornal do Brasil as the best Brazilian
film of the year.
With the triumph of Lábios sem Beijos, Cinédia was
launched as a major new studio, and their second production, Mulher
(Woman),
followed in 1931. A part-talkie, it was directed by Octavio Gabus Mendes
with Mauro serving as the cinematographer. But Mauro soon returned to directing
with what is generally considered his greatest work,
Ganga Bruta
(Brutal Gang), based on a story by Mendes, beginning production in September
1931. After many changes, including cast replacements, he completed the
film in 1933. Ganga Bruta deals with a rich engineer, Dr. Marcos
(Durval Bellini), in Rio who kills his wife on their wedding night when
he learns of her infidelity. Acquitted for his crime of passion, he departs
for the interior where he finds work managing the construction of a large
factory. There, he is attracted to Sônia (Déa Selva), a lovely
young girl who is engaged to another man (Décio Murillo). With no
love of a woman to console him, he frequents a local bar and becomes involved
in fights in which his strength easily bests his adversaries. Soon, his
friendship with the girl develops into a mutual seduction. When Sônia’s
fiancé learns of the affair, he forces himself on her and then storms
out to kill his rival. He confronts Marcos and in an ensuing struggle over
a waterfall is killed despite Marcos’s efforts to save him. No longer a
brute but apparently redeemed by his love, Marcos marries Sônia and
begins a new life. In all respects, the film is brilliant and with an unusual
technique. Still unhappy with talkies, Mauro filmed Ganga Bruta silent
and added synchronized sound recorded on Vitaphone discs. In effect, Mauro
used sound technology to create a new approach to cinema that was neither
the traditional silent film nor the now-established talkies. Along with
a highly effective orchestral score, the sound accompaniment includes songs,
sound effects, and intermittent, brief passages of dialogue. In addition,
there are occasional written dialogue captions superimposed over scenes
in the manner of foreign language subtitles rather than silent film intertitles.
In this way, Mauro was able to create an uninterrupted flow of images and
movement. An example occurs in the flashback sequence in which, without
titles or dialogue, Marcos recalls his experiences with his wife in a series
of brief scenes. The film’s use of phallic symbols and its sexual theme
led Mauro to be called by a critic at the time "the Freud of Cascadura"
(a Rio suburb). Indeed, the story is developed with considerable moral
and psychological complexity. The protagonist, after all, is a killer and
a drunkard. Yet the film suggests that his finding true love in the country
may have redeemed him. His desperate attempts to save his rival and genuine
anguish over his fate seem to indicate that he wants to shed his violent
past stemming from his decadent, wealthy life in the city. The erotic scenes
with the heroine in the beautiful natural settings are in Mauro's classic
style, while the working-class bar and the scenes of the factory's construction
are presented with documentary-like realism. The film's narrative
structure, alternating motifs of life and death, is equally remarkable,
beginning with Marcos's first wedding that is quickly succeeded by his
wife's violent death; then coming full circle with his rival Décio's
funeral followed by Marcos's wedding to Sônia as the film concludes.
Ganga
Bruta was released in May 1933. As with Mário Peixoto’s
Limite
two
years before, Mauro’s technical and narrative experimentation was too advanced
for its time, and the film failed to register with the public and critics
of the day. Two decades later, however, Mauro’s film was rediscovered by
a new generation in Brazil who recognized it as a masterpiece.
Mauro followed Ganga Bruta with his first full talkie, A Voz
do Carnaval (The Voice of Carnival), a large-scale 1933 musical about
Rio’s Carnaval co-directed by Adhemar Gonzaga, in which Carmen Miranda
launched her screen career. He then left Cinédia and in 1934 joined
Brasil Vita Filme, a studio established by Carmen Santos for whom he made
several documentaries and two features starring the actress-producer,
Favela
dos Meus Amores (Slum of My Loves) in 1935 and Cidade Mulher
(City of Women) in 1936. At the invitation of its founder, Edgar Roquette-Pinto,
in 1936 Mauro joined Instituto de Nacional do Cinema Educativo (INCE) where
for decades he directed hundreds of short documentaries on topics that
included art, astronomy, agriculture, and music. He brought to these educational
films the same kind of cinematic artistry that had marked his dramatic
films. After joining INCE, he directed only three more features, all of
them outstanding films: O Descobrimento do Brasil (The Discovery
of Brazil) (1937), an impressive historical epic recreating Pedro Alvares
Cabral’s voyage to the New World in 1500, with a score especially written
by the renowned composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos; Argila (Clay) (1940),
a romantic drama set in the countryside that stars Carmen Santos as a sophisticated
woman whose interest in the art of ceramics grows into a passion for the
artist; and O Canto da Saudade (The Song of Yearning) (1952), filmed
in Volta Grande with Mauro himself playing a leading role as the heroine’s
father in the tale of a musician who loses the woman he loves to another
man. Mauro directed his final film in 1974, a documentary short entitled
Carro
de Bois (Ox Cart) he shot in Volta Grande.
During his later years, Mauro was the major
inspiration for a new generation of Brazilian filmmakers, including Glauber
Rocha and Nelson Pereira dos Santos, who hailed him as the precursor of
Cinema
Novo. He worked closely with the new directors, acting in David Neves’s
Memória
de Helena (1969); writing the Tupi-Guarani dialogue for Nelson Pereira
dos Santos’s Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês (1971) and Paulo
Cesar Saraceni’s Anchieto, José do Brasil (1978); and co-authoring
the story and script of Alex Vivany’s A Noiva da Cidade
(1979).
Although lack of overseas distribution had limited Mauro’s international
recognition during much of his lifetime, he received increasing attention
in France where in the last year of his life he was honored by the Cannes
Film Festival as one of the world’s most outstanding filmmakers. He died
on November 5, 1983, at the age of 86 in Volta Grande, the town where he
was born.
The work of Humberto Mauro is an inspiring
example of what one man with a need to express his passion for life was
able to achieve in the cinema. In the Latin American countries during the
silent era, the lack of an industrial structure for producing motion pictures
favored individual artists who sought to explore the new medium in accord
with their personal visions. Mauro’s creative genius sprang from the very
soil and water of his native land. Indissolubly wedded to the Brazilian
national consciousness, he has long been revered in his own country as
the most Brazilian of filmmakers, the cinematic counterpart of Villa-Lobos.
But his art is also universal in its themes. No one in the history of cinema
has surpassed Mauro in the sensuous beauty of his images. They embody a
deeper spiritual view, almost mystic in its intensity, uniting humanity
to the life-sustaining forces of nature with their capacity to transform
the individual. A sensitive director of his players, Mauro inspired them
to give performances infused with both passion and restraint in roles which
reflected his vision. His characteristic plot motif of sophisticated, urban
individuals finding love amidst the splendor of flowers and trees resulted
in a uniquely cinematic approach in which characterization and drama were
shaped by the natural background. Expressing this lyricism throughout his
work, Mauro was foremost among the silent filmmakers to use the medium
to its fullest. The poet of a new art, Humberto Mauro dramatically reshaped
cinema in his country in works of extraordinary beauty and eloquence.
REFERENCES: André Felippe Mauro, Humberto Mauro: o pai do
cinema brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: IMF Editora, 1997); Humberto
Mauro:sua vida, sua arte, sua trajectoria no cinema, preface by Leandro
Tocatins (Rio de Janeiro, 1978); Randal Johnson and Robert Stam, Brazilian
Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Timothy Barnard
and Peter Rist, eds., South American Cinema: A Critical Filmography,
1915-1994 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); Georges Sadoul,
Dictionary
of Filmmakers (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1972);
Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1979); Alice Gonzaga, "Cinédia: 50 Anos de Cinema," Rio de Janeiro,
Record,
1987; Randal Johnson, "Documentary Discourses and National Identity: Humberto
Mauro’s Brasiliana Series and Linduarte Noronha’s
Aruanda,"
Nuevo
Texto Critico, XI: 21/22, 1998.
RELATED LINKS:
A pictorial tribute to Humberto Mauro published during his 1997 centenary:
http://www.cinemabrasil.org.br/hummauro/
A gallery of Mauro photos from a website based in his native state of
Minas Gerais:
http://www.asminasgerais.com.br/Zona%20da%20Mata/Cult%20uai%20s/Cinema/
Humberto%20Mauro/Humb0001.html
The Brazilian cultural organization, Funarte, sells video cassettes
of films by Mauro and other early Latin American filmmakers:
http://www.decine.gov.br/loja/1loja.htm
Copyright © 2002 by William
M. Drew. All rights reserved.
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