Belarmino

New State, Old Cinema

 Film terminology
Long shot
Medium shot
Close-up
Panning
Tilt
Diege:c and non-diege:c music/soundtrack
P.O.V


 Estado Novo
1910 fall of the monarchy and the ins:tu:on of
the 1st Republic
1926 military coup dtat
1932 1968 Prime Minister Antnio de Oliveira
Salazar
1961-1974 colonial war
1968-1974 Prime Minister Marcello Caetano
1970 Salazars death
1974 Carna:on revolu:on

 Cinema and the State
Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN) turned
Secretariado Nacional de Informao (SNI)
Minister of Propaganda Antnio Ferro (Modernist)
Cinema instrumental to inform the people. In this sense,
cinema could serve the ideology of the New State
Ferro celebrated historical lms and once called the
Portuguese comedies the cancer of na:onal cinema with
few excep:ons.
Propaganda lms in the form of documentaries and newsreels
were produced; i.e, A Revoluo de Maio/The May Revolu3on
(1937, Antnio Lopes Ribeiro).
 Portuguese lm produc<on in the
1940s and 50s
Comedies
O P3o das Can3gas (Francisco Ribeiro, 1942)
O Pai Tirano (Antnio Lopes Ribeiro, 1941)
A Cano de Lisboa (Coanelli Telmo, 1933)
O Leo da Estrela (Arthur Duarte, 1943)
Costa do Castelo (Arthur Duarte, 1947)

Historical Films
Bocage (Leito de Barros, 1936)
Cames (Leito de Barros, 1946)
Chaimite (Jorge Brum do Canto, 1953)

Folklore Films (Lus de Pina)

Capas Negras (Armando de Miranda, 1947)
Fado, histria duma cantadeira (Perdigo Queiroga, 1947)
Sangue Toureiro (Augusto Fraga, 1958)
 The social reality in Portugal in the
late 1930s and 1940s

Illiteracy rate 60% to 65% of the popula:on

Rural and poor: could not aord to go to the
cinema
Only small and medium bourgeoisie (urban
middle class) could actually aord to go to the
cinema and enjoyed the populist subject
maker of musical comedies.

A Comdia Portuguesa (The
Portuguese Comedy)
Musical comedies (Fado is a recurrent presence
in most of these lms)
Nacional-canone:smo (soap-operas)
Comdia revisteira (vaudeville theatre)
The lm stars were olen from teatro de
revista (vaudeville theatre): i.e., Vasco Santana,
Antnio Silva, Beatriz Costa, Laura Alves, etc.
 These comedies depict the desire for social mobility.
Characters social background: middle class (small and
medium bourgeoisie) with social aspira:ons.
Absence of working class proletarians but also the
marginal or the beggar.
Aspira:ons that consist of marry money
Yet in these lms, their aspira:on is usually overcome
through resigna:on of their social status there is no social
antagonism (and in that sense, complicit with the ideology of
the New State)

In Stories of Cinema, Bnard da Costa argues
that:
these produc:ons were the symbol of the na:onal escapism,
the beloved sons of a poli:cal regime that wanted to hide the
real problems of the country from the screens [...] This is not
a very accurate explana:on. Not only did Antnio Ferro have
a special aversion to that kind of lm, but also none of the
then poli:cal leaders specially favoured that kind of
produc:on. (71)

This clich, repeated endless :mes, lm aler lm, was the
real situa:on of most of the cinema spectators [] The c:on
they represented was reality for most of the spectators.
Reality in the lms and reality for the public who saw those
lms as a mirror of their lives. (75)

It is important to highlight that:

The Portuguese comedies were not propaganda
lms as such but rather reect the ideological
context of their :me.

We can iden:fy a contextual ideology as far as
these lms were produced within a given
historical :me (dictatorship) and addressed to a
par:cular class within Portuguese society (that
was ideologically complicit with the New State).
 Secondary bibliography

Colvin, Michael. Images of Defeat: Early Fado Films
and the Estado Novos No:on of Progress in
Portuguese Studies Vol. 26, no. 2 (2010), 149-67

Costa, Bnard da. Stories of Cinema, Lisbon: INCM
Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda (2005)