Northwest Film Forum

STILL LIVES: THE FILMS OF PEDRO COSTA

“A prodigious debut film bursting with visual and narrative ideas, homages, and a desperate romanticism, Costa’s O SANGUE is a thrilling movie/movie for cinephiles. (It will remind you moment to moment of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, Murnau, Bresson [that opening slap, straight out of MOUCHETTE], Cocteau, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, BOY MEETS GIRL.) Shot in splendid, inky black and white and lushly scored with Stravinsky, O SANGUE is a moody nocturne—even in broad daylight, it seems to be the dead of night—set during Christmas and New Year’s in a provincial riverside town. Two brothers, the young, frail Nino and the older Vicente, who is deeply in love with school teacher Clara Danièle, are set upon by evil men (an uncle from Lisbon and two violent debt collectors) after their father disappears. At once a fairy tale, film noir, love story, and murder mystery, O SANGUE announced a major new talent in European cinema.” -James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario

Special introduction by CINEMA SCOPE editor Mark Peranson