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O Samba dir. by Georges Gachot

2015; Music Library Association; Volume: 71; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2015.0042

1534-150X

Christopher L. Ballengee,

Theater, Performance, and Music History

Reviewed by: O Samba dir. by Georges Gachot Christopher L. Ballengee O Samba. DVD. Directed by Georges Gachot. Berlin: EuroArts Music International, 2014. 59878. $19.99. In the 1990s, Georges Gachot began to turn away from made-for-television portraits of European composers and musicians, initially with Bach at the Pagoda (1997), the first in a five-film series on Swiss cellist and pediatrician Beat Richner who moved to Cambodia in 1992 to build a network of children’s hospitals; and next to South America, most recently with O Samba, the last of a trilogy of intimate and artful Brazilian music films. With the Richner series, Gachot established a profoundly musical filmic language, borrowing from standard documentary style, yet with an eye and ear for subtleties of sound design, editing, and dialog that musicians will find interesting. This language deepens in the Brazilian series, unified by recurring visual themes—frequent shots of Rio’s mass transit system, for example, provides a sense of perpetual motion to the series—as well as frequent alternation of tight closeups and long shots in addition to seemingly haphazard cinematographic choices that lend a sense of authenticity to the production. O Samba (literally “The Samba”) centers on the popular samba school (escola de samba) Unidos de Vila Isabel whose unconventional, earthy style earned the group its first win in Rio’s Carnaval competition in 1988, establishing Vila Isabel as a unique and visionary force in Brazilian Carnaval culture. A central point of the film is that samba is not simply music and dance, but a way of life. We learn this through a host of characters, most importantly one of Vila Isabel’s most iconic figures, Martinho José Ferreira, better known as Martinho da Vila. As Gachot makes clear in the film, most non-Brazilians understand samba primarily in terms of the boisterous and catchy sound of the music, this in the ostentatious context of Carnaval. Indeed, the first scene of the film features members of Vila Isabel preparing their instruments, costumes, and larger-than-life floats, relatively pastoral [End Page 554] scenes to which the film repeatedly returns until the final moment of the film where we see Via Isabel, hundreds-strong, parading in all the glitz and ordered confusion of the Carnaval parade. Yet through Martinho, now in his 70s and still going strong, Gachot asserts that samba is also deeply lyrical, poetic, and political, providing a foundation upon which the carnivalesque stands firm. Martinho’s incomparable creative voice is augmented in the film by a host of Brazilian music icons—including Leci Brandão, Ney Matogrosso, Paula Lima, and Martinho’s daughter Mart’nalia—whose on-screen performances and interview commentary confirm that the story of samba cannot be told without also telling the story of Martinho da Vila. In O Samba, Gachot constructs a highly musical narrative, with characters and thematic threads that deeply captured my interest. Well-translated English subtitles contextualize spoken Portuguese (and some French) throughout. Though numerous outstanding live performances are featured throughout the film, none are complete. It is therefore somewhat disappointing that performances are not provided in the DVD’s scant special features. Nonetheless, O Samba is an excellent film appropriate for a broad audience of music professionals and aficionados and well suited for undergraduate courses in music appreciation, world music, and popular music. Christopher L. Ballengee Anne Arundel Community College Copyright © 2014 Music Library Association, Inc.