Must have classics from a past era

By Oliver Gibson

This is the best-known Brazilian contribution to the so-called ‘new Latin American cinema’ of the late 1960s, which rejected the Hollywood canon of the time. It woke up audiences around the world to the existence of a wonderfully self-confident, unique film-making tradition in Brazil.The plot is like a mixture of Luis Buñuel meets the Marx brothers. Macunaima, the central character, is a black man born to a white woman. He is born a fully-grown man with the heart of a playful child in the Brazilian jungle. On his way to civilisation and the big city, he meets a fat freak (the film was released in the US with the title Jungle Freaks) who gives him his leg to feed off. Throughout the film several incidents of cannibalism occur, acting as a metaphor for the voracious appetite within us that never seems to be satisfied and the way everyone feeds of each other in modern society, this can be seen as the main ‘message’ of the film.

Macunaima gradually turns white along the way to his showdown with the villain of the piece, the Cannibal Giant or capitalist, who has a special swimming-pool filled with hungry fish to feed his guests to. In the end, the hero returns to his village a sadder and wiser freak, realising that the benefits of ‘civilisation’ have been greatly exaggerated- though he has kept an electric guitar.

The film was made in 1969 when Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship, and its chief purpose seems to have been to totally confuse the official censors, to rejoice in everything that is different and outrageous and refuses to make sense. Revolution through absurdity.