The Brazilian Chanchada and Hollywood Paradigms (1930-1959)
2003; Wayne State University Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1559-7989
Autores Tópico(s)Brazilian cultural history and politics
ResumoFrom the mid 1930s until the end of the 1950s Brazilian cinema was dominated by a popular tradition which came to be known as the chanchada, a term that was coined in the 1930s by journalists and film critics to refer scathingly to the highly derivative, light musical comedies that were used to promote carnival music and were often modeled on Hollywood movies of the same era. In time this designation became the accepted way of referring to increasingly polished productions, particularly those of the Allantida studios, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1941, which enjoyed unprecedented popular success in Brazil. This article aims to examine the relationship between the chanchada and Hollywood, and to show how imitation of the latter's cinematic models gradually gave way to parodie re-workings of these same generic templates. It will begin by considering the ways in which the Brazilian musical revues of the 1930s and 1940s adapted key elements of the Hollywood musical, particularly its so-called backstage variant. It will then focus on the impact that the USA's celluloid depiction of Brazil/Latin America in the 'Good Neighbor Policy' era had on the chanchada. It will finally look at the parodie and satirical comedies produced in Brazil in the 1950s, which undercut Hollywood's stock motifs in a spirit of carnivalesque inversion, and reflected changes in popular sentiment, particularly in the face of increasing threats to Brazil's socio-cultural identity. Brazilian Musicals in the 1930s: The Carnival Revue Meets the Backstage Plot During the silent era carnival was the focus of much interest amongst Brazilian filmmakers. It has been estimated that between 1906 and the arrival of the talkies in the early 1930s around fifty shorts were produced using footage from the annual celebrations in the city of Rio de Janeiro (Auguste) 1993, 88). The first sound documentary on this popular theme, O carnaval cattlado de 1933 no Rio de Janeiro/ The 1933 Rio de Janeiro Carnival in Song (Leo Marten and Fausto Muniz, Brazil, 1933), was screened on Ash Wednesday 1933, and paved the way for a series of carnival films, such as A voz do carnaval/The Voice of Carnival (Adhemar Gonzaga and Humberto Mauro, Brazil, 1933), which combined real-life footage of carnival balls and processions with a fictitious plot line. As the decade progressed the promotion of carnival music became the raison d'etre for most films, which found a ready-made cast of actors and performers amongst Brazil's radio stars, whose established fame and popularity represented a huge box-office draw. The nascent Brazilian cinema industry took much of its inspiration from the U.S. musical revues which flooded the domestic market from 1929 onwards, the year in which Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont, USA, 1929), the screen's first musical, was shown in Brazil, complete with primitive subtitles. This film inspired the Brazilian talkie, Coisas nossas/ Our Things (Wallace Downey, Brazil, 1931), produced by an American, Wallace Downey, and which included performances by popular musicians such as the samba maestro Noel Rosa. With the release of MGM's Broadway Melody, which portrayed chorus girls trying to make it big on Broadway, the trend for backstage musicals was born, and it was largely thanks to Busby Berkeley's extravaganzas at Warner Brothers in the mid 1930s and the highly successful MGM productions of the 1940s that the show musical became a recognized sub-genre in Hollywood. The first Brazilian musicals were clearly inspired by their sophisticated Hollywood counterparts. AIo, alo, Brasil!/Hello, Hello, Brazil! (Wallace Downey, Joaode Barro and Alberto Ribeiro, Brazil, 1935), the plot of which revolved around a radio fan's obsession with a fictitious singer, set the trend for affording the public a voyeuristic glimpse of life behind the scenes. In Kstudanles/Students (Wallace Downey, Brazil, 1935) Carmen Miranda played an up-and-coming radio star, and in Alo, alo, carnaval! …
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