Belarmino

A biographic movie in a documentary style portraying the life of Belarmino Fragoso a Portuguese boxing champion of the fifties and sixties of last century with he himself doing his own character. It develops itself in an interview with the protagonist intersected by scenes of his present (at the date of the movie) and past life. He talks about himself in the patois of the uneducated lisboners trying to explain how the box business was at the time an industry of exploitation of poor illiterate people who had nothing else to sell than his physical brute force. However he talks with self-satisfaction and belief in his own abilities to face life despite the fact that he is already practically finished as boxer and doesn't have any aptitude to do anything else. He makes a very interesting character and the movie is solidly directed.

Director Fernando Lopes couldn't have start better the serious leap to cinema; mixing his experience in movie critic, documentaries and shorts, jumping from TV to cinema, Lopes signs his first big movie for the magic big room, and grabs with him a great hidden subject in portuguese sport - Boxe - revealing a simple man that became a hero, but that only wanted to escape hungry and help his family - BELARMINO.

A major contribution for the astounding art quality of the film is the omnipresence of Augusto Cabrita, probably the best portuguese cameraman/photographer of the 50's, 60's and 70's. With Cabrita's sensibility and technique, combined with Lopes' imagination and accuracy, we get fabulous frames, that most certainly have influenced many other directors.

watch closely the opening credits, as well as the fantastic sequence at the jazzclub (you can even see the major expert Villas Boas descending the stairs!) and the fabulous ending shots with Belarmino washing his face at Lisbon downtown, dived in humidity and smooth rain.

In documentary terms, we not always feel that the story is being told quite impartially, but that helps to sign the fact that controversy will always be there. Who was responsible for Belarmino's short profits? Why didn't he become a major star? It's all gone, now...

For all, this is not a simple short movie, but a major exhibition of how great cinema can be, even with a very low budget.

;)RIC

After the so-called golden age of Portuguese comedy in the 40's, and the stagnation in the 50's, the 60's brought a new cinema (Cinema Novo)to Portugal, namely by Paulo Rocha, Manoel de Oliveira and Fernando Lopes.

Fernando Lopes' Belarmino is not really a documentary about boxing, but a documentary about the life of a boxer, Belarmino Fragoso, at the end of his short career. It is a very live, frank, surprising portrait of the life of a common man in Lisbon during the 50's and 60's.

It was very much influenced by the Italian Neo-realism, but it's cinematically much more stylish than most of those features. There are some wonderful shots of Belarmino training, strolling through the streets of Lisbon or at home with his family.

The main flaws, for me, are in the interviews, which, maybe because of the editing, become repetitive at times.

Compare to Kubrick's "Day of the Fight".