Black God, White Devil / Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol

Critics call Glauber Rocha's film "Black God / White Devil" one of the great films of all time--and for good reason. This is an Epic that took the film world by storm, one in a series that the director wanted seen as a history of "Brazyl" and all of Latin America. The characters, the visual style, the camera movement, the extraordinary use of landscapes--all bespeak things that are larger than life--while attacking the notion that destiny is something beyond the control of ordinary human beings. The Portuguese title is "God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun." With a title like that, the movie cannot be just a light drama. The film has a formal visual style that harks back to Eisenstein and classic Russian cinema as well as to the great American westerns--this is clearly the work of someone who is steeped in the rich heritage of Brazilian and world cinema. The viewer will also be struck by the director's use of music--which ranges from popular melodies to Villa-Lobos's "Bachianas Brasileiras"--to advance (or interrupt) the story and to convey an analysis of Brazilian history.

With the following verse, Glauber brings you into his film:

"Vou contar uma estória
Na verdade e imaginação
Abra bem os seus olhos
Pra escutar com atenção
É coisa de Deus e Diabo
Lá nos confins do sertão

I'm going to tell you a story
In truth and imagination
Open wide your eyes
To listen with attention
It has to do with God and the Devil
There in the limits of the sertão

or a badlands tragedy in which the cowboy manoel and his wife rosa become lost between a black god and a fair-skinned devil, seen from one side by a blind witness and pursued on the other by Antônio das Mortes."

This is a tough film; one where the viewer is constantly challenged by a rare epic sensibility, by the juxtaposition of extraordinary poetic language and images with violence and cruelty, and by an unusual narrative form that is structured around a couple's pilgrimage in search of an ungraspable absolution and salvation. Glauber Rocha purposely adapted a style based on cordel literature and the oral tradition where the great legendary stories of a people are re-told, or, better, re-sung at village fairs and family reunions.

"Black God / White Devil" is unmistakably the work of a young artist, a poet of words and images who believed in the power of art to transform society; Glauber Rocha was only 25 when he directed the film in the fall of 1963. The energy, the passion for history and for film-making, the stylistic relentlessness (bordering on self-indulgence) are typical of the revolutionary lightning that lit up the skies of the film world in 1964. Even the seemingly obsessive repetition--especially of camera movement and movement by the characters within the frame--must be understood as a way to give a fresh means of expression to a society whose history was bursting from the pressures within.

The film is roughly divided into two parts. In part I, we follow the story of Manoel and Rosa who flee their tenant-ranch to join a millennial cult centered on Sebastião, who promises his followers that the dry, dusty lands of the sertão will turn into the sea and the sea will turn into sertão and that the sky will rain with gold. After Sebastião dies in an Armageddon-like battle on a sacred mountain, Monte Santo, the couple escape to the desert and become followers of Corisco, a visionary outlaw (cangaceiro), the last survivor of a group of cangaceiros led by Lampião, a legendary figure in Brazilian history and folklore. Corisco offers them a different kind of salvation fighting against the forces of the army of the Republic. After a final showdown, Manoel and Rosa escape and find themselves at the promised sea. They must decide how mankind, rather than God or the Devil, becomes master of his own fate.

The visionary sensibilities as well as the actual battles in the film recall a key event in Brazilian history--the horrifying war and massacre of Canudos in 1897, which pitted a religious leader, Antônio Conselheiro, and his followers against the armies of the young Brazilian Republic. All of this took place in the sertão of Bahia.

In 2002, the film was restored, remastered, and released on DVD in a stunning definitive edition, thanks to full support from Glauber Rocha's family, Riofilme, and the Cinemateca Brasileira.