Those who never met have involved a detail of his biography: his birth date on 11 December 1908. Difficult, indeed, to accept that this man right like if, bright as a bleak, complex and full bodied like a vintage port wine, has reached 90, 95, 100, 105 years … The account has stopped date, Manoel de Oliveira was therefore 106 years. The most malicious of his friends attributed his longevity to the fact that for many years he has shot any film.
Manoel Cândido de Oliveira Pinto Hibernatus? May be. No doubt, however, he signed her first film in 1931, at a time when, in Portugal, the cinema did not yet speak, “Douro river faina” was a documentary about the river that bathes Porto, his hometown, and those who derive their meager incomes. He was 31 and had previously shown mainly in sports, Emeritus swimmer racing driver, activities that cinema does not give him.
Actor, but mostly director of several documentaries, he realized his first fiction in 1942: “Aniki Bobo” is a marvel centered on the lives of kids in a poor neighborhood of Porto. Like many well-born filmmakers, this son of a large industrial was interested in preference to the humble and the poor, it is. But it is only 20 years later he staged his second film, “Rite of Spring”.
malicious Director
De Oliveira precursor Terrence Malick ? It is not allowed to see him and, like the Texan filmmaker, he was taken soon a kind of frenzy, almost turning one film a year. Starting point of this overactive, “The Satin Slipper” lasted 6:50 ET won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1985.
Hailed by critical shocked also by its extraordinary vitality and malice which in he knew all times to show his films are not destined to the wider public, and all did not justify the praise which, a little too systematically, they were covered. But all major quality were his own, he was the only one who knows the imagine and to realize them, never stop inventing, experimenting, joke, the proof is that none are alike.
Among his most brilliant successes, it takes including “No, or vainglory order” (1990), “Abraham Valley”, an adaptation of a Portuguese novel itself derived from “Madame Bovary” (1993) and “I’m Going Home” (2001), perhaps his masterpiece with extraordinary Michel Piccoli. Which is one of those who best spoke of the person and the talent of Oliveira, citing “all the lives of this man, multiple and sparkling”, “its always mischievous authority, its eagle eye, his athletic approach “.
Amazing and worshiped
The actors adored him, John Malkovich had elected one of his favorite filmmakers (who gave him a real jealous rage when, having offered making it the character of a movie, he discovered the existence of “Being John Malkovich”), all rushed to meet him, working with him for nothing, or almost nothing, guided by its designated accomplice, the Maverick production Paolo Branco.
As for technicians, the most experienced testified to what ever throughout their career as a director had surprised them, which at a stroke eye noticed a piece of furniture in the decor had been moved five centimeters.
What we say less, which still offers to put the final touches to the portrait is that of Manoel Oliveira liked nothing better than women, as soon as a pretty girl across his field of vision his eyes lit up, and generally he rose from his chair or the chair to follow.
It is not inconceivable that one of them today has led farther than he had never been up this corner of life, in its 107th year He ended up shooting.
Pascal Mérigeau
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