Limite (film)

"Limite" is a film by Brazilian director and writer Mario Peixoto (1908-1992), filmed in 1930 and first screened in 1931.

Over the last decades, "Limite" has left its mark on the cultural history, not only in Brazil. In regard to Brazil, one may think of the now somewhat overcome polemics by filmmaker Glauber Rocha in the 1960s, rejecting "Limite" and favoring "Ganga Bruta" (1933) by Humberto Mauro. More recently we find a sequence of Peixoto in "O cinema falado" (1986), the only film by Caetano Veloso. Singer/songwriter Adriana Calcanhoto projects scenes from "Limite" during the song "O Mocho e a Gatinha" on her DVD "Adriana Partimpim" (2004). David Bowie chooses "Limite" as the only Brazilian film among his ten favorites from Latin America for the "HIGH LINE FESTIVAL" in 2007. In May 2007 a new restored version of "Limite" is screened at the "Cannes Film Festival" as one of the selected films from the "World Cinema Foundation". An idea of Martin Scorsese, some film-makers have decided to put together, within the "World Cinema Foundation", a non-profit organisation whose objective is to provide financial assistance for the preservation, restoration and broadcasting of films from all over the world, in particular the cinema of Africa, Latin America, Asia and Central Europe.

Next a short historic look at the unique film of Mário Peixoto.

The first screening took place on May 17th 1931 in the "Cinema Capitólio" in Rio de Janeiro, a session organized by the "Chaplin Club", which announced "Limite" as the first Brazilian film of pure cinema. It received favorable reviews from the critics who saw the film as an original Brazilian avant-garde production, but never made it into commercial circuits and over the years was screened only sporadically, as in 1942 when a special session was arranged for Orson Welles who was in South America for the shooting of his unfinished "It’s all true" and for Maria Falconetti, lead actress of Dreyer’s "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928). Due to various facts, "Limite", sometimes referred to as the "unknown masterpiece" - an expression derived from Georges Sadoul who in 1960 had made an unsuccessful trip to Rio de Janeiro just to see the film - along with Mário Peixoto, became quite legendary subjects.

Soon after the first screening in Rio, "Limite" was shown on several occasions in Europe, in Paris as well as at the "Marble Arch" cinema in London where it is said to have attracted Sergei Eisenstein’s interest and an article written by him entitled "A movie from South America", supposedly published in 1931 in the "The Tatler Magazine". This article has frequently been quoted as proof for the international recognition and reputation of "Limite", as in the program of the "Berliner Filmfestspiele" in 1981 or as recently as in 2004 when "At the edge of the earth", the documentary about Mário Peixoto, was presented in several European movie theaters. In the 40s and 50s, Mário himself had often mentioned the Eisenstein text but never came up with the article itself. When trying to get financing for one of his projects – a movie called "The soul according to Salustre", in 1964 -, he was told by Plinio Süssekind, a friend, that the article would be very helpful to raise funds. Two weeks later Mário presented a hand written text in Portuguese, which was actually published in 1965 by filmmaker Carlos Diegues in his cinema-column of the Brazilian magazine "Arquitectura", vol. 38. Peixoto himself first said he had translated this text from a French version of the original English article and later on claimed that cameraman Edgar Brazil had translated it from German into Portuguese, but, according to Saulo Pereira de Mello, finally admitted to having written it himself. The article was then republished by Mello (2000) as a text written by Mário Peixoto and the English version can be found in the recent publicaction: Michael Korfmann (org.) "Ten contemporary views on Mário Peixotos Limite" (Monsenstein und Vannerdat; Münster 2006; ISBN-10: 3865822649; ISBN-13: 978-3865822642) .

A second item to mention is the vanishing of "Limite" in the 60s and 70s. In 1959, the nitrate film began to deteriorate and Plinio Süssekind and Saulo Pereira de Mello started a frame-by-frame restoration. "Limite" only returned to festivals and screenings in 1978. Even though nobody could see the movie between 1959 and 1978 – as in the case of Georges Sadoul and his unsuccessful trip to Rio de Janeiro in 1960 - it still served as a reference for controversial discussions and statements while others even doubted that the film really existed. Glauber Rocha, leading figure of the new cinema, the cinema novo, classified in 1963 the director as "far from reality and history" (59) and the unseen movie as "unable to comprehend the contradictions of bourgeois society" (66), a "contradiction historically overcome" (67) and confirmed his judgment of "Limite" as a product of the intellectual decadent bourgeoisie again in 1978 after finally having seen it.

For a theoretical approach on "Limite", one may think of fluidity and continuity as two central terms, not so much in regard to the structural concept which is based on visual and rhythmic variations and not continuation as the main filmic principle, but in regard to the underlying philosophical ambition: the oscillation between a fluid memory stream and solid, concrete objects and episodes, which emerge as fixed points in the continuity of time. This proposal is quite clearly formulated in the article by Peixoto "A movie from South America", the text formerly attributed to Eisenstein. Here, Peixoto first emphasizes the role of the "camera-brain" and the "instinctive rhythmic film-structure" of "Limite", and then defines the film as somewhere between a singular , outstanding work of art and a completely anonymous item, "unidentifiable in the inexpressive crowds" and which’s "poetic evasion is built on a vigorous plan of adaptation to the real" (Mello 2000: 85). For Peixoto, the experience offered by "Limite" cannot be adequately captured by language, but was made to be felt. Therefore, the spectator should subjugate himself to the images as to "anguished cords of a synthetic and pure language of cinema" (88). According to the director, his film is "meticulously precise as invisible wheels of a clock", where long shots are surrounded and linked by shorter ones as in a "planetary system" (88). Peixoto characterizes "Limite" as a "desperate scream" aiming for resonance instead of comprehension. The movie "does not want to analyze. It shows. It projects itself as a tuning fork, a pitch, a resonance of time itself" (88), capturing the flow between past and present, object details and contingence as if it had always "existed in the living and in the inanimate, or detaching itself tacitly from them". Since "Limite" is more of a state than an analysis, characters and narrative lines emerge, followed by a probing camera exploring angels, details, possibilities of access and fixation, only then to fade out back into the unknown, a visual stream with certain densifications or illustrations within the continues flow of time. According to Peixoto, all these poetic transpositions find "despair and impossibilities"; a "luminous pain" which unfolds in rhythm and coordinates the "images of rare precision and structure" (91). The oscillation between the fluid and the solid, the outstanding and the unidentifiable, the concrete object and the abstraction is a basic principle not only for this film but also for his literary work.

If we follow these outlines, we may see "Limite" as a film with a clear, elaborate and recognizable concept, maybe difficult to identify at first sight but emerging fuller at each screening one assists.

Finally a comment on the soundtrack: Peixoto’s original plan to underline his film with natural noise as wind, rustling leaves or breaking waves was abandoned due to technical difficulties and substituted by a record-soundtrack chosen by Brutus Pedreira, who played the pianist in "Limite" and had actually been a musician in real life. The chosen musical themes – among others, from Satie, Debussy, Borodin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Cesar Franck - were then played on two alternating record players during the screening, frequently operated by Peixoto and Pedreira themselves.

"Limite". A film by Mário Peixoto

Brazil, 1931. 115 min. Music from Satie, Debussy, Borodin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Cesar Franck. Scenario and direction: Mário Peixoto. Director of photography: Edgar Brazil. Cast : Taciana Rei , Olga Breno, Raul Schnoor, Brutus Pedreira , Carmen Santos , Mário Peixoto.

A translation of the intertitles :

1. Journal headlines: Escape from prison. The prison guard’s complicity.

2. Comment: This intertitle corresponds to a lost part of the film where man number 1 helps woman number 2.

3. Graveyard: Man on the left (Mário Peixoto): You come from the house of a woman, who is not yours, supposing she is mine, just like this one here was yours.And if I told you that she is leprous?

Bibliography

Korfmann, Michael (org.)Ten contemporary views on Mário Peixotos "Limite". Monsenstein und Vannerdat; Münster 2006;

Mello, Saulo Pereira de2000 Mário Peixoto - Escritos sobre cinema. Rio de Janeiro: aeroplano.

Rocha, Glauber2001 Revisão Crítica do Cinema Brasileiro. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify.