Go To Work Your Bum
Hugo Carvana: Honouring the Rascal
Hugo Carvana de Hollanda had already established his reputation as an actor when he decided to work “on the other side”, that of direction. He debuted with an ethnographic exercise about the Brazilian knack for manoeuvring around difficulties …. and squareness. He became a filmmaker in 1973 with a comedy about the only form of cunning heroism possible in Brazil during the military dictatorship: being a ‘street smart’. As neither Pedro Malasartes nor João Grilo, two of the most famous symbols of picaresque heroism, would be living to resist the censorship of the leaden years, Carvana created Secundino, the main character in Go to Work, Vagabond. An experienced trickster from the times of military uniform and (false) economic miracles, he evokes all the physical traditions of the icons of his past (Oscarito, Zé Trinidade and Mesquitinha), creating an interpretation based on a whole body swing and funny gestures. Dino (played by Carvana himself), a pickpocket, upon getting out of prison wants to get his old friends together to save the snooker hall that he was a fan of, and he wants his two snooker cue buddies by his side: Babalu (Nelson Xavier) and Russo (Paulo César Pereio). But life has been cruel to both of them. However, Dino’s gift of the gab can change the situation. It was this same gift that won Carvana awards (amongst them the Kikito for Best Film at the Gramado Film Festival), gained him a place at Cannes (in the Critic’s Week), and established him as an ‘auteur’ director with a chronicle based style. It is a shameless chronicle, critical, well-humored, and above all poetic.
Rodrigo Fonsecais a film critic and screenwriter and teaches Film History at the Escola Darcy Ribeiro.
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