Cinema
Limite
Mário Peixoto · 1931
Synopsis
Out at sea, two women and a man drift in a boat. Each revisits their past: the first, a seamstress, escaped from prison with the help of a guard and had to flee again on learning from the newspapers that the police were looking for her; the second left an unhappy marriage to an alcoholic pianist; the man, a widower, loved a married woman. These memories, given in fragments, return in turn and alternate with shots of the boat lost at sea.
Context
Written in 1929 from a photograph showing a woman's face surrounded by handcuffed hands, which appeared on the cover of the magazine Vu, the film was shot in 1930 at Mangaratiba, with Edgar Brasil behind the camera, and was presented on 17 May 1931 at the Capitólio cinema in Rio during a screening of the Chaplin Club. Seen by few spectators, it became a myth. Its single damaged nitrate print was restored by Saulo Pereira de Mello and Plínio Rocha, work completed in 1978; a new restoration was presented in 2010 by the World Cinema Foundation.
Who it is for
A two-hour silent film with no linear plot, which asks real patience of the viewer.
Prizes and reception
Named the best Brazilian film by the Brazilian Cinematheque in 1988, it came first in the critics' ranking in 2015.