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THE NEW BRAZILIAN CINEMA
ence continued to watch the film even after the screen had gone
blank. In the last few years (when a single model of cinema has
emerged) the relationship between the film and the audience has
tended to wear thin as soon as they set eyes on each other. It tends
to be a case of love at first sight, without a second glance.
2
At the end of the silent era we imagined that the cinema allowed
us to see more, and more clearly. (As Dziga Vertov said in his film
Kino-Eye, 1924, the cinema represented ‘the possibility of making
the invisible visible, or illuminating the darkness, of seeing without
boundaries or distances.’) But then Mário Peixoto showed us
that, in reality, the cinema makes us see less, and less clearly, and
that its strength lies precisely in this incomplete way of seeing. As
the title of the film suggests, in Limite (Limit, 1931) what we see in
every shot and in the way of establishing a connection between
them, is something in the image that limits our vision. The narrative
hides more than it reveals. What we see is only there to establish
a tension with what is off screen. In this case cinema conceals,
hides and cuts. It all begins with a cut, as if the order to stop filming
(‘cut!’) had started the action, and the cry of ‘lights, camera,
action!’ had brought it to an end.
At that time we imagined that fictional films were very important
(the market for such films was even greater than it is today)
but then Humberto Mauro said that Brazil was the ideal country
for the documentary, ‘because the raw materials are everywhere.’
The important things were studios and the star system, in the eyes
of the industry, whereas Mauro said that in a documentary ‘the
lead role is not played by any actor, but by the camera.’ He also
said that ‘cinema is a waterfall, dynamic, beautiful and neverending,’
that ‘people should not film nature when they want to,
but at the time that nature chooses,’ and that on seeing ‘a waterfall
I don’t go right up to it but, instead, I hide behind a banana
tree, waiting for the right moment.’ Ganga bruta (Rough Diamond,
Humberto Mauro, 1933) combines elements of the fictional film
(with the camera sometimes in the lead role, moving as if it saw
the world through the eyes of a drunken man) with those of the
documentary (with the camera sometimes observing quietly and
for long periods of time the landscapes and people before it). As
its title suggests, this film presents itself as raw material, a rough
diamond in need of polishing, dulled by the audience’s gaze.