Country: Brazil
Year: 1968
Duration: 92'
"The Red Light Bandit is Sganzerla's first feature
film. He was 22, he was a critic-cinephile and he tried a rebellion - he
went for it and he won. The film sets new ground for blending aesthetics
that one would never think of mixing together: Orson Welles, Pierrot le
Fou and the structure of sensationalist radio broadcastings of crime
journalism. It's the first true example in Brazilian cinema of an
art-pop film. The Red Light Bandit is to some extent the cinematic
equivalent of the tropicalist movement in Brazilian pop music (Caetano
Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze): a logic of mixing high culture with scum,
mass culture with more elitist art, tradition with avant-garde, in a
cannibalistic strategy that seeks to devour everything that is other or
foreign in order to make it its own. "Whoever wear shoes will not last,"
says the deranged character-title of the film. This fixation on nearly
prophetical, definitely charismatic figures might get Sganzerla a little
bit closer to the work of Glauber Rocha. But, as it's a combat film, The
Red Light Bandit makes no friends: it's against Brazilian politicians,
against upper-class privileges and against the Cinema Novo, turned
institutional by the time and growingly innocuous." (R. Gardnier)
Biography
film director
Rogerio Sganzerla
Rogério Sganzerla was born in 1946 in the town of Joaçaba, in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Between 1964 and 1965 he wrote film critiques for the cultural supplement of the newspaper "O Estado de São Paulo" and for other newspapers. In 1967, he collaborated with Andréa Tonacci on his first film, the short film Documentário. He directed his first full-length film in São Paulo in 1968, O Bandido da Luz Vermelha, which caused a scandal and led to his clamorous break with Cinema Novo. He defined the outlines of Cinema Marginal, or "udigrudi" (according to a denigrating definition by Glauber Rocha), which weren't recognized by its exponents, including the various "Paulist" filmmakers. Nor was it recognized by Julio Bressane, who had become a friend of Sganzerla's in those years. During those years he was also exchanging ideas with Augusto De Campos, the famous exponent of Brazilian poesia concreta, and with the exponents of Tropicalism. In 1969 he directed A Mulher de Todos, starring the actress Helena Ignez, the "muse of the new cinema," who became his wife and often starred in his films. In 1970 he and Julio Bressane, along with Helena Ignez, founded the production house BelAir, which produced six films in a few short months (three by Bressane and three by Sganzerla). Gilberto Gil wrote the music for Copacaban a Mon Amour. Caetano Veloso, after seeing Sem Essa Aranha, wrote the song Qualquer Coisa. Like Bressane, Sganzerla was forced to leave Brazil by the military dictatorship: he and his wife moved to Paris, then to London. After returning to Brazil, in 1977 he directed O Abismu, starring Norma Bengell (who is also the producer), Wilson Grey and José Mojica Marins. He next directed the so-called trilogy about Orson Welles' experiences in Brazil: Nem Tudo é Verdade (1986), Tudo é Brasil, and O Signo do Caos (2003). This last film, which took many years to complete, was presented at the Festival of Brasilia at the end of 2003. Rogério Sganzerla died on January 9, 2004. Helena Ignez plans on making a film based on the screenplay which her husband had been working on during his final years. This film, Luz na Travas - A Revolta de Luz Vermelha, returns to the "red light bandit," thirty years later. In 2001 the book "Por um Cinema Sem Limite" (azougue editorial, Rio de Janeiro), was published; it is an anthology of various writings by Sganzerla about cinema.
FILMOGRAFIA
Documentário (cm, 1966), O Bandido da Luz Vermelha (1968), A Mulher de Todos (1969), Comics/HQ (cm, doc, 1969), Quadrinhos no Brasil (cm, doc, 1969), Sem essa, Aranha (1970), Copacabana mon amour (1970), Carnaval na Lama (1970), A Miss e o Dinossauro (super8, 1970), Fora do Baralho (doc, 1971), Viagem e Descriçao do Rio Guanabara por Ocasião da França Antártica (cm, 1976), Umbanda no Brasil (cm, doc, 1977), Welles no Rio (cm, 1977), O Abismu (1977), Mudança de Hendrix (1971-78), Horror Palace Hotel (mm, doc, super8, co-regia: Jairo Ferreira, 1978), Noel por Noel (cm, doc, 1981), Brasil (cm, doc, 1981), Irani (cm, doc, 1983), E o Petróleo Nasceu na Bahia (cm, doc, 1984), Nem Tudo é Verdade (1986), Anónimo e Incomum (video, doc, 1990), A Alma do Povo Vista pelo Artista (video, doc, 1990), Isto é Noel (mm, doc, 1990), A Linguagem de Orson Welles (cm, doc, 1991), Perigo Negro (5° episodio di Oswaldianas), Tudo é Brasil (1998), Informação Koellreuter (cm, video, doc, 2003), O Signo do Caos (2003).