60 Years Later, Black God, White Devil‘s Cinema Novo Is as Prescient as Ever

By Ursula Muñoz S.  |  July 17, 2024 | 10:00am
Movies Features Glauber Rocha
60 Years Later, Black God, White Devil‘s Cinema Novo Is as Prescient as Ever

Heat takes no prisoners. This universal truth is as veracious in the unairconditioned Boston apartment from which I write this in the dead of summer, as it is in the Brazilian sertão where Black God, White Devil takes place. Or perhaps I exaggerate my own plight by comparing it to that of the characters in filmmaker Glauber Rocha’s seminal classic, whose new 4K restoration hits shelves today courtesy of the Criterion Collection. After all, there’s no escaping the heat of the stark desert in Rocha’s film, untouched by the urban developments that had by then reached Brazil’s major cities. If the heat in prototypical American Westerns reflected settlers’ valiance amid the harsh and unfamiliar new frontier, the punishing heat in Black God, White Devil serves as its inverse, reflecting the hardships of Brazilians neglected by their nation and abused at the hands of landowners.

Black God, White Devil, which turned 60 last month, tells the story of the ranch hand Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) and his wife Rosa (Yoná Magalhães), who struggle to make ends meet in the hinterlands which form the country’s northeastern region—also known as the sertão. Manoel hopes to buy his own plot of land, but ends up killing his boss after the latter tries cheating him of his earnings. Pursued by authorities, the couple venture deeper into the desert where they join forces with two leaders who preach revolutionary ideals, promising the desperate Manoel an escape from poverty. The first is Sebastião (Lidio Silva), a self-proclaimed saint who leads a religious cult and preaches of revolt against wealthy landowners, but commits horrific acts of violence against helpless people—including his own devotees. The second is Corisco (Othon Bastos), the head of a small group of nomadic bandits whose mission to overthrow the local government is upended by a self-indulgent quest for revenge against the descendants of a landowner who wronged him. Meanwhile, a solitary bounty hunter by the name of Antônio (Maurício do Valle) is hired by the church and wealthy elite to kill the leaders of both groups in order to quash public dissent. Without revealing too many specifics, the protagonists’ fate at the end of the film remains undetermined, with Manoel and Rosa once again on the lam as the promise of prosperity fails to materialize for them.

A benchmark of modern Brazilian film, Black God, White Devil is notable for many reasons, not least its presence in the country’s Cinema Novo movement. Translating to “New Cinema,” Cinema Novo formed during the early 1960s as a response to class conflict and racial turmoil, as well as an effort to decolonize the nation’s cinema, which had up until then been supported by foreign investors and consisted mostly of cheaply made musical comedies, Hollywood-style epics and self-serious dramas. 

Centering intellectualism and social issues, and shaped by local social and political developments, Cinema Novo lasted until the mid-1970s and is divided into three main phases. The first phase, lasting from 1960 to 1964, remains most reflective of Cinema Novo’s original goals of fostering the public’s conscience regarding systemic issues such as class inequality, as well as assembling the ideologies needed to combat this in Brazilian society. A major proponent of this movement was Rocha himself, who in 1964 published his seminal “Aesthetics of Hunger” essay, making the case for a new national cinema that catered to the average Brazilian instead of placating foreigners who viewed Latin American society as unsophisticated without understanding their plight. 

“The hunger of Latin America is not simply an alarming symptom: it is the essence of our society,” he wrote. “There resides the tragic originality of Cinema Novo in relation to world cinema. Our originality is our hunger and our greatest misery is that this hunger is felt but not intellectually understood.”

Crucially, Rocha’s manifesto argued that it was natural and not primitive for colonized populations to resort to violence during times of desperation; it is through this lens that the transgressive violence in Black God, White Devil is best understood. The characters in this film are pushed to extreme measures by their circumstances. Manoel has no choice but to kill his swindling boss if he wants to escape poverty—or so we think. Do the avenues for liberation they take afterwards really offer a solution for him and Rosa? Both Sebastião and Corisco represent dead-end ideologies that further oppress our increasingly fanatical protagonist, the same way populist figures have always manipulated desperate masses in real life.

Black God, White Devil isn’t the only film by Rocha to form a scalding indictment of classism and inequality while also tackling themes like authoritarianism, ideological purity and political fanaticism with honesty and nuance. Less than a month before Black God, White Devil’s Cannes premiere, a U.S.-backed military coup ousted the country’s democratically elected president, João Goulart, from office, resulting in a military dictatorship that lasted until 1985. This led many Brazilians to lose faith in Cinema Novo—something that was reflected in the films themselves during the movement’s second phase, which lasted from 1964 to 1968. During this time, Rocha made Entranced Earth, a political drama about a journalist’s crisis of conscience during a fictional election between two equally corrupt politicians on opposing sides. 

Bound in part by increased censorship and political persecution under the new administration, the third and final phase of Cinema Novo would go on to retain the transgressions and social critiques of previous phases, while adopting a more polished, fantastical aesthetic. While some critics have argued this contradicts the movement’s original ideals, its self-conscious cannibalizing of old and new ideologies and influences make it fascinating in its own right. During this time, Rocha made Antônio Das Mortes, which centered on the bounty hunter from Black God, White Devil and served as the final film in what many consider a spiritual trilogy composed of those two films and Entranced Earth.

Despite Black God, White Devil’s ideological opposition to his American contemporaries, and the director’s claims that Brazilian cinema must distance itself from Hollywood, the movie still adheres to certain frameworks of the American Western. Still, Black God, White Devil remains just as notable for the way in which it demonstrates oppression and liberation as cyclical in a world where the downtrodden do not possess the means to achieve stability. The film’s final moments, which shows Manoel and Rosa running from Antônio in the desert heat, closely resembles the inciting incident which kickstarted the events of the movie. Their new life of persecution is as repetitive as the chores Rosa performs in the beginning of the film, a look of slight derangement on her sweat-soaked face as she gazes ahead, churning the water pump.

Black God, White Devil and the work of Rocha remains prescient in the 21st century, as ideological purity and extremism continue to threaten the fabric of not just Brazil, but the entire American continent—not least of all, the United States. As surely as the sun rises, demagogues continue to take advantage of us. Perhaps it’s time we pause and consider how it is that we fall into this cyclical trap.

Ursula Muñoz S. is a critic, journalist and MFA candidate at Boston University who has previously written for news and entertainment outlets in Canada and the United States. Her work has appeared at Xtra, Cineaste, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more. For further reading, feel free to follow her on Substack and X, where she muses about Taylor Swift and Pedro Almodóvar (among other things).

 
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