SUBLIME PERVERSION: 4 FILMS BY JOÃO CÉSAR MONTEIRO
This November, Northwest Film Forum and The Beacon are teaming up to bring you four newly restored films from one of Portugal's greatest filmmakers: João César Monteiro. A filmmaker rooted in the literary, but with a firm grasp on the cinematic form, Monteiro marries the subtle comedic nature of directors like Jacques Tati with the scintillating perversion of the Marquis de Sade to create films that revel in the surreal and subversive.
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE YELLOW HOUSE @ NWFF Oct 31-Nov 9
THE LAST DIVE @ NWFF Nov 14-23
SILVESTRE @ THE BEACON Nov 17-18
HOVERING OVER THE WATER @ THE BEACON Nov 24-25
Films in this Program
João César Monteiro
120 minutes
João César Monteiro (1939-2003) endures as one of the most provocative and influential figures of Portuguese cinema. At once a dandy and a pauper, a hedonist and a monk, a revolutionary and a classicist, a realist and a romantic, Monteiro was an artist of profound contradictions. His films are an unholy marriage: a wicked burlesque sensibility wed to the formal rigor of a high modernist, shot through with a poet’s delight in the reveries of language and music. Pinching from the high and the low, he synthesized the avant-garde with a popular spectacle; his work is “an intervention in public life,” a revolt against decency and established order. As a frequent performer in his own films, Monteiro struck an indelible onscreen presence. In the guise of his signature alter ego, João de Deus, he embodied a ribald mischief-maker recalling both Jerry Lewis and Erich von Stroheim, the clown and the devil wrapped into one. Bringing a touch of madness to all that he did, Monteiro's cinema is fueled by a gourmand appetite for life in all its sordid and sumptuous variety. Now, thanks to this monumental restoration effort, his body of work can rightly be appreciated as one of the most astonishing achievements of 20th-century filmmaking.
SILVESTRE
For Maria de Medeiros’s first film role, in which she disguises herself as a male knight to live and love freely without the interference of a dangerous suitor, João César Monteiro created a theatrical representation of medieval life, complete with mythical creatures and painted and front-projected backdrops. Taking inspiration from the story of Bluebeard and Portuguese fables, SILVESTRE is a radical take on the historical film, and one of the best examples in Portuguese cinema of the confluence between reality and fantasy.
SILVESTRE
For Maria de Medeiros’s first film role, in which she disguises herself as a male knight to live and love freely without the interference of a dangerous suitor, João César Monteiro created a theatrical representation of medieval life, complete with mythical creatures and painted and front-projected backdrops. Taking inspiration from the story of Bluebeard and Portuguese fables, SILVESTRE is a radical take on the historical film, and one of the best examples in Portuguese cinema of the confluence between reality and fantasy.
João César Monteiro
143 minutes
João César Monteiro (1939-2003) endures as one of the most provocative and influential figures of Portuguese cinema. At once a dandy and a pauper, a hedonist and a monk, a revolutionary and a classicist, a realist and a romantic, Monteiro was an artist of profound contradictions. His films are an unholy marriage: a wicked burlesque sensibility wed to the formal rigor of a high modernist, shot through with a poet’s delight in the reveries of language and music. Pinching from the high and the low, he synthesized the avant-garde with a popular spectacle; his work is “an intervention in public life,” a revolt against decency and established order. As a frequent performer in his own films, Monteiro struck an indelible onscreen presence. In the guise of his signature alter ego, João de Deus, he embodied a ribald mischief-maker recalling both Jerry Lewis and Erich von Stroheim, the clown and the devil wrapped into one. Bringing a touch of madness to all that he did, Monteiro's cinema is fueled by a gourmand appetite for life in all its sordid and sumptuous variety. Now, thanks to this monumental restoration effort, his body of work can rightly be appreciated as one of the most astonishing achievements of 20th-century filmmaking.
HOVERING OVER THE WATER
One of the most underseen films in Monteiro’s career is also one of his most beautiful. In an implicit homage to Piero della Francesca and the Italian Renaissance (beautifully photographed by Acácio de Almeida), Laura Morante stars as a Tuscan translator who returns to Portugal with her children one year after her husband died on the country’s sun-drenched southern coast. As the ghost of her husband haunts their home’s white walls, the whole region is on edge after the assassination of Issam Sartawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization who had travelled there. When she finds a wounded man (Philip J. Spinelli) drifting by the beach, a tortured, sensual attraction grows between them while political violence, conspiracies, and personal grief weigh on the fragile possibilities of a new love.
HOVERING OVER THE WATER
One of the most underseen films in Monteiro’s career is also one of his most beautiful. In an implicit homage to Piero della Francesca and the Italian Renaissance (beautifully photographed by Acácio de Almeida), Laura Morante stars as a Tuscan translator who returns to Portugal with her children one year after her husband died on the country’s sun-drenched southern coast. As the ghost of her husband haunts their home’s white walls, the whole region is on edge after the assassination of Issam Sartawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization who had travelled there. When she finds a wounded man (Philip J. Spinelli) drifting by the beach, a tortured, sensual attraction grows between them while political violence, conspiracies, and personal grief weigh on the fragile possibilities of a new love.
