Procópio no Cinema

"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."

A three-episode anthology film based on short stories by Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos.

A drama about double personality

Comical late 1920s Brazilian daily life's situations, portrayed by two friends who decide to serenade a common girlfriend, a drunk barber and a bad haircut, and a man who is barred from playing his songs at the hotel where he was staying.

José Maria, whom they always confuse with someone, ends up convincing himself that he is like everyone else, enjoying the pleasure of getting settled in the lives of others.

Arlindo works delivering the clothes that his wife washes. During a working day, he finds a customer's cat, who offers a reward to whoever returns it. To deliver the animal, he ends up going through a lot of confusion.

Three couples, two already living in Rio; and the third, with 'the one who hates carnival', coming to visit an aunt. One of the women bets that all husbands are unfaithful. They send invitations to their husbands to the carnival ball. They find a pretext to be able to attend. They, in turn, go in disguise, just like the maid. Hence the confusion at the ball, each one dating the other's wife.

Seeing his farm in ruins, swindler tries to sell it to the first interested person, who happens to be a man who fakes being a millionaire but in fact cannot pay for the estate.

A poor girl must find the money to pay for her blind sister's eyesight operation.

Barber's jeep crash against crazy scientist's house, where the latter was building a time-machine. The crash triggers the machine, taking them to Gaza kingdom, circa 1153 B.C., where they get involved in many funny situations. Spoof of Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah

When chain gang prisoners attack their guards, some of the hardened criminals escape Brazil's infamous Anchieta Prison amidst all the pick-ax carnage. The government dispatches a machine-gun squad to round up the fugitives.

Maos Sangrentas translates to Bloody Hands in English, and that's just what this gruesome Brazilian melodrama delivers. The story begins when a gang of dangerous convicts escape from a penal colony. With the police in hot pursuit, the escapees cut a gory swath through the countryside. As his comrades are killed off one by one, the leader of the group descends into gibbering madness. In contrast to this, a subplot develops involving the least dangerous of the escapees, who murdered his wife in a peak of self-righteous rage and is now seriously in doubt about the wisdom of his deed. Principal scenes reworked in 1962 to make the film The Violent and the Damned (q.v.).