Brandos Costumes

Brandos Costumes
Directed by Alberto Seixas Santos
Produced by Center of Portuguese Cinema
Tóbis Portuguesa
Written by Alberto Seixas Santos
Luísa Neto Jorge
Nuno Júdice
Starring Luís Santos
Dalila Rocha
Isabel de Castro
Sofia de Carvalho
Constança Navarro
Cremilde Gil
Music by Jorge Peixinho
Cinematography Acácio de Almeida
Edited by Solveig Nordlund
Distributed by Marfilmes
Release dates
 September 18th, 1975
Running time
 72 min
Country Portugal
Language Portuguese

Brandos Costumes (1974) is a Portuguese film directed by Alberto Seixas Santos which was a part of the Novo Cinema movement – influenced by the cinematographic neo-realism and specially by the Nouvelle Vague. It was released in 1975, when the political regime portrayed in the film (the Estado Novo) had already taken been destroyed.

The film was released in Cinema Londres, in Lisbon, on September 18, 1975.

Overview

Synopsis

A portrait of the everyday life of a typical middle-class family in parallel with the fall of the Estado Novo, the 48-year dictatorship led by Salazar. The daughters' conflicts and frustrations with their parents, their grandmother and their maid find an obvious echo in the country's collective events. The Carnation Revolution is about to explode.

Historical context

As a rupturing film, Brandos Costumes is less identifiable by the presence of avant gard aesthetics or an agile plot with a daring structure - not like Belarmino, by Fernando Lopes or O Cerco, by António da Cunha Telles - than by its ideological left-wing posture, taking a portrait of the social classes, and by its social and political sense of critic.

Some characteristics of the new generation films, revolted with the state of things and motivated to denounce the social injustices, are clearly present in Brandos Costumes. The theatrical tone of the representation of this work let it be integrated in the tradition that Manoel de Oliveira (O Passado e o Presente - 1971) explores.

Cast

Crew

External links