Carlos, a young middle-class man from S.o Paulo, works as a clerk at Volkswagen during the surge of the Brazilian automotive industry. With the prospect of a managerial role, he leaves the factory persuaded by Arturo, a simple-minded and corrupt Italian immigrant who has made his fortune selling spare parts for big car manufacturers. His marriage to Ana is cold and unsatisfying. Even his relationship with Luciana, a free and independent woman, does not stir any passion in him. Surrounded by a city in full transformation, Carlos is confronted with a growing sense of loss and generational malaise. A fundamental, though often underrated, work of Cinema Novo, S.o Paulo, Sociedade Anônima defines its space of action from the first sequence. Unlike many contemporary works that look at rural poverty and social injustice in the Brazilian northeast, Luiz Sergio Person focuses on the irreversible psychological effects of S.o Paulo’s urban industrial boom on the emerging middle class. Alienation, isolation and a sense of loneliness contribute to the emergence of a mentality – cynical and predominantly bourgeois – that praises work and indulgently justifies corruption. After starting his drama studies in Brazil, Person attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the 1960s together with Cuban maestro Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, an experience that was fundamental for his vision of cinema, which distinguished him in the panorama of Brazilian cinema of the time. Filmed in the same year as Aléa’s Memorias del subdesarrollo and Antonioni’s La notte, according to Walter Salles, S.o Paulo has an extremely close relationship with these two films. “Person is a true master who managed to speak of Brazil in an extremely articulate way, comparable to Rocha’s allegorical vision of Terra em transe, or Pereira dos Santos’ essential narrative in Vidas secas”. In addition to defying the heavy censorship of the time with daring dialogue, Person achieves a complex but never confusing non-linear narrative. Equally surprising is the versatility of Ricardo Aronovich’s camera, capable of capturing the energy of a large crowd or the fragility of a face with similar sensitivity.

Cecilia Cenciarelli