Caídos do Céu

When Felizardo Boaventura (meaning Lucky Goodventure) (Augusto Aníbal) dies, he tries to reach Heaven. However, he is trapped in the bureaucracy of the angels that lost his documentation. The chief-angel sends Rita Naftalina (Dercy Goçalves) and Claudionor (Walter D'Ávila), that died many years ago, to Earth to investigate the life of Boaventura, and judge if he may stay in Heaven or go to Hell.

"Caídos do Céu" is a silly Brazilian musical comedy called "chanchada". This very common type of movie in the 40s has great technical limitations and usually is a very silly storyline prepared for many songs sing by the popular Brazilian radio singers of the 40s. The songs are too dated and the sound is completely damaged, therefore it is quite difficult to understand some parts of the story and give a fair evaluation in IMDb. The name Rita Naftalina, for example, is very funny in the context of the story, but I was not able to understand the name of the character in the theater. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Caídos do Céu" ("Fallen From the Sky")

The movie starts with a man going to Heaven, only to find out that his name is not on the Entrance list. Not on ANY list in heaven's bureaucracy. After complaining to some chief angel, he is asked to wait. They will send someone to earth to check if he was a good man when alive.

To avoid temptation, they send the purest couple of souls they can find. The year is 1946, and the pure souls are two folks who lived around 1890. The basic joke is the culture shock this man and woman from another century receive when they land in Rio de Janeiro right after World War 2.

The sound on the copy I saw was quite damaged, so I can only guess about the quality of many of the jokes. But, from what I was able to hear, I believe the film is very worth viewing, specially if you like musicals of that era. You get the typical characters: the Jewish salesman, the angry Italian dad, his daughter (who likes samba and wants to marry a samba musician), and so on.

It is also interesting to note this was the movie used to launch songs for the Victory Carnival: the first one after the end of World war 2. There is even a song with direct social equality demands. That was also Brazil's first carnival under a democratic government in quite a few years, and it shows.