Manuel Guimarães
Manuel Fernandes Pinheiro Guimarães (born August 19, 1915 in Valmaior , Albergaria-a-Velha , † January 29, 1975 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese film director .
life and work
From 1931 he studied painting at the University of Fine Arts in Porto . Between 1933 and 1945 he exhibited several times, but also worked as a stage painter, illustrator and caricaturist.
In 1942 he first came into contact with cinema and was assistant director to Aniki Bóbó by Manoel de Oliveira . The following year he moved to Lisbon and devoted himself entirely to film.
He worked as an assistant director on some of the biggest box office hits of the time, including a. for Arthur Duarte , António Lopes Ribeiro and Jorge Brum do Canto . It was not until 1949 that he was able to complete his first own film, the short film O Desterrado ("The Exile ") about the life and work of the sculptor António Soares dos Reis (1847–1889), with his father as the actor.
1951 followed with Saltimbancos ("The Jugglers"), his first feature film, based on the book Circo ("Circus") by the Portuguese neorealist author Leão Penedo, with Maria Olguim and the Berlin-born Helga Liné in the female lead roles. The aesthetics and the neorealistic film language, especially when compared to the popular comedies of the time (see Portuguese film ), convinced parts of the criticism.
His next film was Nazaré , in 1952 with Virgílio Teixeira and Helga Liné in the leading roles and with the script by the neorealist author Alves Redol, who was enthusiastic about Saltimbancos . But the editing of the film suffered a lot from the censorship of the Estado Novo . From then on, Guimarães tried to win audiences and income through more conventional films, which should then enable him to produce more sophisticated works. But neither Vidas Sem Rumo (1956) with the popular Milú, nor the color film A Costureirinha da Sé (1958) with the blonde Maria de Fátima Bravo and the camera by Perdigão Queiroga were the hoped-for box office hits.
António da Cunha Telles , who was devoted to his work, enabled him to produce his most elaborate production to date, O Crime da Aldeia Velha , based on a play by the dramaturge Bernardo Santareno (1920–1980) and starring the Frenchwoman Barbara Laage in 1964 . The rather ambitious film, however, fell short of its potential, also due to the usual objections of the censors. He didn't find his way to the emerging Novo Cinema .
With O Trigo eo Joio ("Wheat and Chaff", 1965), based on a book by Fernando Namora and with Eunice Muñoz , he completely lost touch with the zeitgeist with an attempted neorealistic film. In the following years he turned documentaries and tried a comedy in 1972, the title of which did not come true ( Lotação Esgotada , "Sold Out Performance").
After the end of the dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, he took courage and went back to work on an ambitious film, the adaptation of the book Cântico Final by Vergílio Ferreira . But he died before the final cut made by his son Dórdio Guimarães. His final version of Cântico Final ("final hymn") premiered in 1976 and did not appeal to the taste of the audience after the Carnation Revolution .
Filmography
|
|
Literature evidence
- Jorge Leitão Ramos Dicionário do Cinema Português (1962-1988) , 1st edition, Editorial Caminho, Lisbon 1989 (pages 190-192)
- Alcides Murtinheira & Igor Metzeltin History of Portuguese Cinema 1st edition, Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-7069-0590-9 (pages 75–76, 88, 93, 106)
Web links
- Manuel Guimarães in the Internet Movie Database (English)
See also
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Guimarães, Manuel |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Guimarães, Manuel Fernandes Pinheiro |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Portuguese film director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 19, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Valmaior , Albergaria-a-Velha |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 29, 1975 |
| Place of death | Lisbon |