lunedì 8 luglio 2019

Como era gostoso o meu francês - Nelson Pereira dos Santos

un mercenario francese viene catturato e ospitato e accolto in una tribù assediata dai conquistadores europei.
gli verrà data in sposa una bellissima donna, insomma un integrato in tutto e per tutto.
ma non sa ancora come andrà a finire.
film un po' etnologico, spesso violento, non si dimentica facilmente.
merita, merita - Ismaele





QUI il film completo, in lingua originale






…La storia è ispirata al libro Warhaftige Historia di Hans Staden, un soldato tedesco del XVI secolo, che racconta la sua cattura in Brasile da parte dei Tupi. Uscito nel 1557, il libro - il cui titolo completo era Warhaftige Historia und beschreibung eyner Landtschafft der Wilden Nacketen, Grimmigen Menschfresser-Leuthen in der Newenwelt America gelegen (Vera storia e descrizione di uno Stato di persone selvagge, nude, sinistre, cannibali nel Nuovo Mondo, America) - ebbe un grandissimo successo, tradotto in numerose lingue, con un totale di 76 edizioni…

I can't say whether this 1971 feature is the best film by Brazilian master Nelson Pereira dos Santos, the father of Cinema Novo, but it's the first one I saw, and it left the strongest impression. It describes the complex interactions between a French adventurer and a Tupinamba Indian tribe and charts a brilliantly comic and highly ironic ethnographic analysis of both; almost the entire cast is naked, and the overall message is that probably the only way the Frenchman can truly be absorbed by the tribe is nutritively. A must-see.

"How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman" is the first absolutely non-exploitative (not nonerotic) movie I have seen to require almost total nudity from its cast, both sexes. Everyone is very convincing, but not always so convincing as to dissociate daily life in a 16th-century Indian village from just having an awfully good time.But in the last analysis the film isn't all that funny, and it doesn't really mean to be. A very uneven work, its best passages are among its most serious—especially one sequence near the end, when the Indian wife describes for her captive husband the ritual that is to be his death. Half-dancing, sometimes smiling, sometimes almost crying, she re-creates on a barren place—a huge rock by the seashore—all the elements and emotions of a complex and fateful drama. It is a lovely performance, and, in its respect for space and movement, it seems very close to the spirit of classic cinema.

…He will be an honored guest for the next eight months, will have Seboipepe (Ana Maria Magalhaes), a woman presented to him on the first night of his capture, as a wife, and probably will escape. Slowly, the captive establishes a routine and quickly goes native, shedding his clothes, shaving the top of his head, and eventually fighting alongside the Tupinambas to defeat the Tupiniquins.

He believes he can win his life back by being loyal and helpful to Cunhambebe. He secures 10 kegs of gunpowder from the merchant in exchange for some buried gold and jewels. Unfortunately, both men become greedy and fight over the treasure. If the captive believes he can secure his freedom by presenting the chief with gunpowder, why is it necessary for him to have treasure? This is one of the ways this film shows how truly illogical and irrationally acquisitive the Europeans are…

In How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman we learn along with the Frenchman how life in the native village functions. Tribal ways are simple and direct, with a most communal activity centered on the paternal chieftain figure. Although the wall-to-wall nudity reportedly kept the film out of some festivals, we soon adjust to all the naked people. Unlike many stories about primitive cultures, the tribal camp looks clean and the natives healthy. The picture also doesn't dwell on violence or sex scenes.
The film maintains its satiric edge by periodically introducing quotes from the notebooks of early explorers, commenting on the weirdness of the tribes they have discovered. Although How Tasty Was My Little Frenchmanhastens to its only logical ending, a text postscript assures us that 'justice' would soon be done. Within a decade, the newly appointed governor of Brazil will start a campaign of extermination against the many native tribes. An entire civilization would soon be wiped out.

…Santos plays as well with notions of national identity, reducing the very concept of nationality to the level of absurdity. The Frenchman is mistaken for a Portuguese, but Pereira dos Santos suggests that there is hardly a difference. Both represent unwanted colonial intrusions, so the question of which power is doing the intruding is hardly essential, especially if, as the director suggests, the Indians realize the man's true identity as a Frenchman, but pretend to believe he is Portuguese so they can eat him anyway. (The Tumpinambas are on trading terms with the French). Santos' equal opportunity irony extends as well to the Indians. The Tumpinambas are no less warlike than their European counterparts, swearing destruction to their sworn enemies, the Tupinaquins. The director shows a genuine flair for battle scenes, and the blunt and bloody showdown between the two groups that forms the film's climax is expertly staged, as the hordes of Indians engage in brutal hand to hand combat against a lush natural backdrop of greens and the blue of the ocean. Santos here shows the Indians to be as brutal and as divided along tribal lines as the Europeans. As the different groups in the war sequence quickly become indistinguishable, the significance of these tribal differences becomes increasingly absurd. The presence of the Europeans only intensifies the local conflict and makes it more deadly, since they bring with them gunpowder which the Indians use to more efficiently destroy their enemies…

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