Cinema
A grande feira
Roberto Pires · 1961
Synopsis
In Salvador, the traders of the Água de Meninos fair risk being driven off their site, which is coveted for a housing development. Around the fair lives a whole small world of outcasts, prostitutes and crooked lawyers, exploited by greedy contractors, while the city modernises. Among them, Chico Diabo, a hothead, dreams of blowing everything up, and Ely, a rich, dissatisfied woman, has a Swedish sailor for a lover. The street poet Cuíca de Santo Amaro comments on the story.
Context
Directed in 1961 and produced by Rex Schindler, who co-wrote the screenplay, the film was shot in the fair itself, with the help of Glauber Rocha, who also plays a small part in it, and of young artists and intellectuals from Salvador, among them Helena Ignez. It belongs to the Bahian cinema cycle, a precursor of Cinema Novo. According to the journal Tabuleiro de Letras, it was the cycle's most successful experiment with critics and the public; Senses of Cinema sees in it a cross-section of the whole society around the central market.
Who it is for
A film of about ninety minutes, in the Portuguese of Bahia, in the manner of a neorealist ensemble film.
Prizes and reception
Considered the greatest success of the Bahian cycle, it brings together several of its figures, from Glauber Rocha to Antônio Pitanga.
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