Paulo Betti Movies
- 2006
A father determined to celebrate his son's tenth birthday with a classic Mazzaropi film finds out just how difficult it can be to track down classic comedy in an era where fickle audiences fill multiplexes screening only the latest in big-budget American fare. When Quinzinho (Matheus Nachtergaele) turned ten, his father took him to see a Mazzaropi comedy. Now that Quinzinho's own son is turning ten the loving father wants nothing more than to carry on the tradition, but in the twenty-first century it's hard to find a theater screening Mazzaropi films. His donkey swiped by a con man and his mission growing ever more bleak by the minute, Quinzinho is later arrested when what appeared to be a Mazzaropi screening turns out to be an illegal meeting by politically minded squatters. Later, when Quinzinho does procure a rare Mazzaropi film print, he finds that the only way to convince contemporary theaters to screen it is by chaining himself to the theater in protest. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matheus Nachtergaele, Gorete Milagres, (more)
- 1999
In a story reminiscent of A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a Brazilian drifter named Augusto with a terminal heart condition appears in a nameless Latin American town armed only with an oboe. The town's inhabitants do little but fight, die, and attend funerals -- that is, until Augusto enthralls the townsfolk with his haunting melodies. Soon an elderly man thought to be dead springs to life, while a bickering couple finds love in the warm glow of his music. For the first time that anyone can remember, the town comes alive. The old movie theater starts up again and flowers mysteriously start to bloom. O Toque do Oboe was screened at the L.A./AFI Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paulo Betti, Leticia Vota, (more)
- 1999
Marcos Bernstein, the co-writer of Central Station (1998), spins this gorgeously photographed, humanistic portrait of a family patriarch in the waning years of his life. Anthony Quinn plays Giuseppe, the aging head of a large family of Italians living in Curitiba, Brazil. While his great-grandchildren's lives drift in separate directions -- one great-grandson wrestles with nudging the family pasta business in a new direction as a great-granddaughter decides to take the plunge into acting -- Giuseppe is troubled when a relative makes a sudden visit from Italy. She looks exactly like his beloved wife, who died in an unexplained plane crash. One day, he summons his strength, rises from his wheelchair, and walks along the beach to reminisce about his past love. Oriundi was screened at the 1999 Vancouver Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Quinn, Paulo Betti, (more)
- 1996
In 1980, impoverished working-class child actor Fernando Ramos da Silva became the darling of Brazilian cinema after starring in the internationally acclaimed Pixote, a wrenching look at the plight of Rio de Janeiro street urchins forced into criminal lives. With such an auspicious debut, a great career for Ramos da Silva seemed inevitable. Unfortunately, fate and the rigidity of Brazil's social stratus had other, more tragic plans. This biopic tells his sorrowful tale and follows the grim sequence of events that led to his brutal, controversial murder by the police.
Ramos da Silva was the seventh in a family of ten. His father died when he was still a child. He got his start acting in a play and was later selected from 1300 other boys to play the role of Pixote. For the role, he received world-wide attention and a small fortune. It was too much for Ramos de Silva and he began to identify too closely with Pixote, it created a schism within the confused boy that he never resolved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Ramos da Silva was the seventh in a family of ten. His father died when he was still a child. He got his start acting in a play and was later selected from 1300 other boys to play the role of Pixote. For the role, he received world-wide attention and a small fortune. It was too much for Ramos de Silva and he began to identify too closely with Pixote, it created a schism within the confused boy that he never resolved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1994
This Brazilian film, set over a nine month period between December 1970 and September 1971, chronicles the true story the hunt for Carlos Lamarca, the military renegade and leader of a revolutionary group that in 1970 kidnapped a Swiss ambassador to Brazil. Following the kidnapping, the revolutionaries were individually hunted down, killed or tortured as the authorities searched the jungles of the Bahia region in search of Lamarca. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paulo Betti, Carla Camurati, (more)
- 1989
Dede (Guilherne Fontes) is a Brazilian teen who lives with his middle-class grandparents who are members of the local communist party. When his grandmother dies, his grandfather's health soon fades to the point where he can't speak or walk. The local party officials ask Dede to continue to family tradition and take over his grandfather's position of social authority, but when Dede is introduced to cocaine by his best friend Alpino (Marcos Palmeira), the attraction to drugs is more appealing to him than political activism. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Guilherme Fontes, Malu Mader, (more)
- 1989
Leticia (Vera Fischer) is a beautiful woman who is the obsession of two men. One is her extremely jealous ex-lover, the other is a pilot who routinely makes trips to the gold mines in the jungles of the Amazon. Leticia is embroiled in a scheme to sell a forged painting which is supposedly by a famous artist. So is her ex and his assistant. Things get heated as the romantic competition between the two men is complicated by the shady business deal, and the action reaches a climax in the Amazon jungle. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vera Fischer, Paulo Betti, (more)
- 1987
The story in this inventive and critically well-regarded film is told backwards, beginning in the 1980s and detailing the lives of two couples who were deeply affected by the popular song of the 1960s "Besame Mucho". From then until the 1980s, pop music defines the key moments in their lives. The effects of each situation are shown first, and then the causes are gradually revealed, culminating with the characters' college years. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Antonio Fagundes, Jose Wilker, (more)
- 1987
All three of the main female characters in this film were performed by Lucella Santos. The three women in question all live around a plaza in Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, and none of them is aware of the others. Though their adult responses to deeply flawed childhoods are very different, each of them was abandoned in a very hurtful way by their fathers. One sleeps around incessantly, for no particular reason. Another has become the captive of her overzealous mother, and the last has become an extraordinarily jealous harpy, even though her kindly husband does nothing to provoke her in any way. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lucelia Santos, Norma Bengell, (more)
- 1986
The setting of this drama is a beautiful and costly home in Sao Paulo that has recently come on the market. When a real estate agent starts handling the house, he discovers a woman and her daughter have moved in as squatters on the premises. Meanwhile, the night watchman of the estate has his own views on the squatters, and the three separate factions -- squatters, agent, and watchman -- have to somehow work out a solution to this situation. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cynthia de Paula, Carlos Augusto Carvalho, (more)
