Grande Otelo Movies

Boca de Ouro is a Brazilian gangster who has had all his teeth pulled out and replaced with golden ones as an announcement of his power and ruthlessness. In this story, based on a 1959 play by Nelson Rodrigues, chronicles the swath he cuts through Brazilian society: his power puts him on a par with the elite, and his background makes him very crude indeed. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This Brazilian film by director Paulo Cesar Saraceni stars Milton Gonclaves as Natal, the famous banker who contributed financial support for years to the School of Samba. Most of the plot focuses on the connection between organized crime and the samba more than on the dance itself. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

This densely-packed and odd docudrama refers back to Orson Welles' 1942 visit to Brazil to make a movie called "It's All True." Using newsreel footage from that period, re-enactments of his visit, and excerpts from his movies and radio shows, director Rogerio Sganzerla seems to imply that politics intervened in Welles' project, cutting it short. At the same time, Welles is not always painted in a complementary light, whether intentionally or not. Before the final curtain comes down, it is revealed that Paramount Studios found several hundred reels belonging to Welles' Brazilian stay. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This drama is an adaptation of a 1935 novel by Jorge Amado. Baldo is a black man from the wrong side of the tracks whose lifetime occupations keep changing. He works at being a servant, thief, boxer, ne'er-do-well, circus performer, and finally a strike organizer. Throughout this daunting array of activities, he carries a torch for a fair-haired beauty from the opposite side of the tracks whose own life changes from pampered to impoverished, and from impoverished to drug-ridden. She loves Baldo, but their destinies never seem to cross at the right place or the right time. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

On the eve of the October, 1930 installation of Getulio Vargas as a dictator in Brazil, a leader of the opposition Liberal Alliance Party was murdered. This imaginative and well-wrought, fictional film is about the indirect involvement of Anayde Beiriz (Tania Alves) in that murder, but rather than focus on the political consequences, the film concentrates on the personality and character of the woman herself. Anayde was not bound by puritanical or religious restrictions in her relationships with men, and so her affair with the journalist Joao Dantes (Claudio Marzo) was sexually liberated for its time. Dantas had tight political connections with the military head of the Republican Party, making his own politics clear - what is less clear is the motivation for his subsequent actions. When the leader of the Liberal Alliance Party invades Dantas' apartment and makes public intimate letters and photographs of his relationship with Anayde, the journalist tracks down the man in a restaurant, and kills him. Since the dictator Vargas was supported by Dantas and considered a fascist by many, the underlying questions about Anayde are whether or not she could be considered "liberated," or was she simply a product of one time, one political outlook, and one place? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This is the last film made by director Marcel Camus, best known for his legendary film Black Orpheus, filmed in his beloved Brazilian locale 17 years before. This tragicomedy is filled with lots of local color, including voodoo episodes, and recounts the adventures of Otalia, a strangely innocent young Brazilian prostitute who has just arrived in Salvador, Bahia. Though her belongings are stolen from her shortly after arrival, Otalia swiftly meets up with a group of charming and helpful friends. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A journalist is tortured by police in the wake of political and social chaos, and the information he reveals leads to the death of a popular rebel leader. The journalist recovers and is sent to interview a plantation owner who is fighting to save his land from being nationalized. Men are helpless to halt the changes that are sweeping the country. The journalist is driven off his father-in-laws land when he voices support of a rebel strongman. His younger brother tries to grab the land for himself and ingratiate himself to the new government. In a pique of revolutionary fervor, the journalist wishes for his brother's death and threatens to have his father arrested. The patriarch commits suicide after burning down his home so it will not fall into the hands of the rebels. The journalist inherits the land and all the problems of the peasants he tried to help. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

1962 is known as the year of Cinema Novo -- the year that the Brazilian film movement broke. Roberto Farias was the author of an influential essay that laid the groundwork for the movement's profound economic model and later became the head of Brazil's national film distribution agency Embrafilme. As a director, Farias produced a number of compelling films in the Cinema Novo style -- loose, edgy editing coupled with stories that reveal the contradictions of Brazil's society. Train Robbery Confidential takes the stock plot of a train robbery a turns it to serve the ends of social commentary. Tiao Medonho is an easygoing gang leader with big ambitions but few plans. After stumbling upon a group of fellow petty criminals, they let Tiao in on their plot to rob a mail train carrying a month's worth of pay out to Brazil's rural areas. The robbery comes off without a hitch and the group splits up each to live the lux life. It doesn't last, however, (when does it ever?) and the police begin to zero in on Medonho. At the film's climax, his partners execute a kind of justice which serves as a revolutionary allegory and as a critique of a society that drives its poorer members to crime. ~ Brian Whitener, Rovi