Limite

There is nothing ordinary about this movie. Even its continued existence seems to be a fascinating bit of cinematic and cultural history, reflected in portions of the footage that were considerably degraded prior to digital preservation. Between filmmaker Mário Peixoto's pointedly unconventional selection and arrangement of shots, his editing, and Edgar Brasil's cinematography, in part I'm reminded of Dziga Vertov's 'Man with a movie camera,' save for that 'Limite' boasts discrete storytelling versus pure technique. That storytelling is conducted piecemeal and effectively through imagery alone, as any text in this silent picture is sparing (and perhaps also dependent on where and how you watch) and arguably inessential to the film itself. Rounded out simply with lush orchestral music, at the outset the feature seems decidedly uncomplicated, and for those who have difficulty with the silent era maybe altogether lacking. Even for those accustomed to older titles, and more unorthodox ones, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that 'Limite' is a little challenging. For those who can best appreciate it, however, this is rich and engrossing, with little ready comparison.

Should one view this strictly as a somewhat abstruse exercise in experimental film-making, still it would be worthy on that basis alone. 'Man with a movie camera' might actually be a fair point of reference after all, as no small part of the shot composition in 'Limite' is comprised of portraits in miniature of people, structures, landscapes, or objects that are in and of themselves wonderfully curious and curiously wonderful. Between this and close-ups, oblique angles, a sometimes freely moving camera, and other atypical qualities of direction and photography, the fundamental visual experience of the feature is joyously flavorful, and maybe its core value. Granted, this may understandably not be enough for some viewers, yet the certainty of the excellence in this regard is then also abutted against a sense of narrative that is more loose and less concrete. To be sure, there is plot herein, yet its scenes, characters, and beats are often given less than perfect definition, such that discerning connective threads is not immediately guaranteed. Such deficit of clarity will doubtlessly further alienate some viewers, and nonetheless make the title more difficult even for those otherwise prepared to engage with it.

For my part, what I require most out of any given picture is a story, a through line, some distinct progression from A to B. This isn't to say that I can't also admire films that adopt a more avant-garde approach - but on the other hand, those projects that try to have it both ways are all but destined for more stringent assessment. Where 'Limite' focuses on its resplendent, painstaking visual construction, or where it emphatically focuses on communication of major plot, it's sharp if not also altogether brilliant. The more artistically minded it becomes in conveying its story, centered around its more plainly evident themes, the more I personally struggle with it. By all means, I think this feature is fantastic, deserving on its own merits and earning a solid recommendation for those who enjoy the less mainstream side of cinema. I just also think that a tad more explicitness in the storytelling would have broadened the movie's viewership, and opened up new channels of esteem otherwise, without actually losing any of its substance (direct or indirect) or artistic value. As if to illustrate the point: the music is great, yet just as there are times when its juxtaposition with a scene is perfect, and other instances when the specific piece selected to accompany a specific moment is ill-fitting.

Still, maybe all these words are beside the point, because the truth remains that by the nature of what 'Limite' is, its appeal will be, well, "limited" to the most ardent, open-minded, and patient of cinephiles. Again, for its shot composition, cinematography, and editing alone I believe this is worth watching, let alone the bigger ideas underlying its craft and the particular story (stories) it tells. Even at that, though, mileage will vary significantly from one viewer to the next. I'm of the mind that this is well worth seeking out and exploring, and I can see how it's held in such high regard - with the recognition that not everyone will have the same experience.

Another comment here gives some precious background around the film which frees us here to examine the cinematic, the work of moving illusion.

We cut at the heart of cinema when we say that memory is one of the central facets of what gives rise to reality, that faculty we have with the capacity to recall and project illusion, a cinematic subject. We have three characters stranded on a boat here, each reminiscing in turn about currents of life that brought them there.

The whole is what they were fond of calling a "cinematic poem" in those days, which means this. Memory as a way of shuffling narrative, creating currents of image so that it's not anchored on a stage, nor pivots around clearly revealed drama, but wanders off and about, free to gather up disparate views from the whole mundane horizon.

People walking places, empty windows, a flower by the side of the road, an affair, a Chaplin movie, tall grasses, these and others are all picked up to be scattered about again by the camera. It's already where Jonas Mekas would arrive a long time later.

Those were wonderful times but so different - horizons that were open then are now closed and vice versa. So when a scene of inner turmoil is transmuted as the camera wildly swinging around at the hands of the operator, you get the painterly sense desired, how the known geography in front of the eye can be made to spill like a painter mixes colors. It's French inspired in this sense, the works of Epstein and others.

We have come up with more eloquent ways since, which comes down to a single thing. The silent makers worth knowing all dismantled perception, freeing eye from world. That was enough at that stage. The question then was how to regroup these fragments in a more penetrative sense that looks behind appearances to find soul, actually do it. All the subsequent cinematic schools of note would busy themselves with ways to thread this cornucopia of images, Italians first.

This might well be what this filmmaker was doing in his way, looking for soul, and it was enough to impress Welles when he was going to be down there in Brazil a decade later. But it is also randomly scattershot for long stretches, giving simply a fragmental sense.

As a last thing to note, the wonderful experiments of the silent era would soon draw to an end, this comes on the tail end. Sound rolled in, solidifying reality back to a fixed state, removing the sense of reverie ingrained in silence. You'll see near the end here a wonderful sequence of symphonic water - film could still be thought of as music, whereas not after.

The real Limite, as opposed to its myth, is an elaborate experimental home movie made by a very bright 22-year-old, getting his rocks off about his frustrated love life -- an affair with a married woman. The film got produced only because of his family's wealth and connections -- but after it was made, no one in Brazil would distribute it, so it disappeared from sight and gradually languished into a "cult film."

It's worth a look for its ravishing flashes of brilliance, and especially for its use of the camera as an active participant -- allowed to express the frustration & rage that the characters are "limited" from expressing openly (as extra-marital relationships were still a taboo subject in Brazil in 1930?). But without the musical sound track assembled from well-known compositions by Satie, Debussy, Stravinsky, etc. it'd be unwatchable for most of its 2 hours of meandering and deliberately veiled self-indulgence.

A cinematic masterpiece? On a par with films by Dreyer or Vigo or Welles? That's just Brazilian hype. Apparently abetted by the director himself who in 1965 -- out of yet more frustration & rage at the poor reception his magnum (and only) film opus had received -- published a Portuguese translation of a glowing review by none other than "Sergei Eisenstein" -- but no one could locate the original, and Peixoto finally acknowledged, shortly before his death in 1992, that he had penned it himself.

This is an absolute brazilian classic, and I wouldn´t be too patriot to call it as an international classic as well, altough it must be very hard for foreigners to be able to see this one. There isn´t much of a story, but Mário Peixoto (who never directed any other film in his life) give us a very stylistic film, in which, as in all silent films, what matters is what is shown, and not what is told. In fact, there are only two "dialogs" in the whole movie.

Limite is almost a filmed poetry, and we´re carried away by its smooth rhythym and great visual power. A must-see picture.

'Limite' is a great, poetic, inspiring mystery ride. I dare to say that it is the visually best film I've seen from that era. The slow, unique pace and the repeating structure of its main musical motif, Erik Satie's theme 'Gymnopédie', intensify the suggestive effect of the immensely beautifully captured images in a magnificent montage and unfolds one of the great philosophical questions of the 20th century: the unsolvable contradiction between transience of human life and the eternity of the universe. The story is hard to access, because Peixoto almost always works with flashbacks and rare title links, so we have to solve the puzzle for our own. Nevertheless, it's the imagery that is so fascinating, full of suicidal feelings, desperateness, tristesse and wonderfully compositions of nature - trees, foggy landscapes, waves. An unparalleled cinematic experience I will not forget and of course highly recommended.