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My firstborn
daughter Fleur as a child
Aniki-Bóbó
https://miff.com.au/program/film/aniki-bobo
Dir. Manoel de Oliveira / 1942 / 72 mins / Portugal /
Portuguese / Drama / Australian Premiere
Program Strand/s:
Restorations
The feature debut of Portuguese master Manoel de
Oliveira returns to the screen, beautifully restored, as a charming,
proto-neorealist revelation.
Young Carlitos’s heart beats a little faster for
Terezinha; so does Eduardo’s. Terezinha, for her part, has eyes mainly for a
doll in the window display of a shop, the latter of which has the tantalising
and lightly ominous name Temptations. Hoping to win his crush’s admiration,
Carlitos swipes the doll for her – and, in doing so, introduces a new tension
and moral murkiness into the lives of this gang of Porto urchins.
Working from a short story by José Joaquim Rodrigues
de Freitas, Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira (The Strange Case of
Angelica, MIFF 2010) anticipated the eruption of neorealism in Italy several
years later by choosing to use nonprofessional actors and shoot on location in
his home city. But while its greatness is now recognised, Aniki-Bóbó was
largely dismissed in its day, and de Oliveira – the only filmmaker whose career
stretched from the silent to the digital era, and one who remarkably continued
directing beyond his 100th birthday – would not make another feature-length
film for 21 years. In its spareness, the auteur’s first fiction film is an
edifying counterpoint to his later, lavishly stylised works, and enchanting in
its own right.
“Embodies a poetic sensibility … Staggeringly simple
in conception, it’s an immaculate piece of filmmaking and just one of many
wonders that Manoel de Oliveira brought to cinema in his many years of
indefatigable creation.” – The Film Experience
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