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The Hollywood Criticism About The Violent Content In Present Brazilian Movies

Since the end of the “Chanchada” era, by the end of the 1940’s, represented by the actress Carmen Miranda and the Cinédia productions, the Brazilian cinema started to become an industry and to produce another model of films, tending to be more realistic. Cinematographers like Nelson Pereira dos Santos, influenced by the filmmaking techniques of the Italian Neo-Realism, and Anselmo Duarte, who won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival with “Payer of Promises”, established a new concept in Brazilian filmmaking. They dealt with themes related to incisive national problems from that time, from conflicts in rural areas to human problems in the large cities. As the country was facing a period of increasing coercive and repressive behavior by the government and society, the violence were gradually implanted in those Brazilian films to achieve such realism, like the one we still see in the contemporary movies, in a lower level of graphical violence comparing with today’s movies.
The vehement content from current Brazilian films has been frequently disapproved by the American critics. The criticism made by these professionals often defines these movies as unpleasant, incoherent, hypocrite, and dully repetitive. The issue about such heavy and aggressive strength is bifurcated into those who believe such content is just set intending to arouse strong reaction from the spectators, especially by exaggerated or lurid details, and those who support the idea of violence as a crucial element of the realism in present films.
The critical reviews about today films like “City of God” and “Elite Squad” often classify these movies as creations that simply produce messages of violence without a major meaning, rebels without cause. In the LA Weekly website (on January 23, 2003), the film critic John Powers stated in the last paragraph of his review, “But if ‘City of God’ whirs with energy for nearly its full 130-minute running time, it is oddly lacking in emotional heft for a...