Jorge Amado Movies

Based on a popular Brazilian novel by Jorge Amado, this lively drama slyly comments upon Brazilian society while telling a tale of reconciliation and subtle revenge had at the hands of the fast-living titular character, a woman who 26 years before was banished from her remote home village of Sant'Ana do Agreste for promiscuity. Cloaked in mystery, she returns home from Sao Paulo. The residents who welcome her know that she is recently widowed from a wealthy man and that she has been sending money to the family, but they know nothing else. The still fantastic looking Tieta is accompanied by her step-daughter Leonora. Still jealous, Tieta's wallflower sister Perptua, who is also a widow, secretly conspires with their father to learn the truth about the scandalous Tieta who is busy stirring up erotic trouble amongst the town's most pious hypocrites. ~ Sandra Brennan, 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

Robert Mulligan directed this Americanized re-make of the successful Brazilian comedy Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. Sally Field stars as Kay Villano, a lonely widow of three years who can't forget the memory of her dead husband, Jolly (James Caan). Jolly was a selfish and unfaithful Broadway choreographer who still managed to win Kay over with his charm. But Kay has fallen in love again with Rupert Baines (Jeff Bridges), a stuffy professor of Egyptology. As her wedding day approaches, Kay receives a visit from Jolly's ghost, who taunts and harasses her, clearly upset that Kay is marrying someone so dull. Kay goes ahead with the marriage and Jolly refuses to disappear, resulting in a bizarre menage-a-tois. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

This Brazilian satire is by one of the founders of the Cinema Novo filmmaking movement, Nelson Pereira dos Santos. The film chronicles the chaos that results when a prominent American Nobel Prize winner arrives in Bahía, with nothing but praise on his lips for a long-forgotten local writer-scientist named Pedro Archanjo. When the media finally discover who Archanjo was and what he espoused, they are completely horrified to discover that he was a man who believed that the way to improve the lot of humanity was for people of various races to marry and have children by one another in mixed-race marriages. Further, Archanjo clearly acted on his beliefs. The rampant racism of Brazilians, which is almost never discussed, is completely exposed. Flashbacks show Brazilians listening with approving interest to talks by Nazi race-theoreticians in the 1930s. In the present, the American is seen to be applying Archanjo's theories, by having an affair with a local mestizo woman. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A girl orphaned at a young age becomes the spark for a violent confrontation between two street gangs. ~ John Bush, Rovi