The cinema novo movement of the 1960s was envisioned as a challenge to the conventions that had been imported into Brazilian filmmaking through the influence of Hollywood. In his manifesto of 1965, ‘The Aesthetics of Hunger’, one of the foremost practitioners of the movement, Glauber Rocha, described the artistic landscape of his country as being laden with ‘a formal exoticism that vulgarises social problems.’ The intention was to act as a prophylactic against such depictions and, particularly in its early years (or ‘First Phase’, 1960-64), cinema novo strove to bring light to the struggles of the downtrodden and exploited. When Rocha’s second feature film, Black God, White Devil, premiered in 1964, it was not only the most prominent of the films to date – it was selected for competition at Cannes and became the Brazilian submission for the Academy Awards – but it has subsequently been held up as a work that typifies the values espoused during the period and has endured as one of the greatest Brazilian films ever made.
The plot of Black God, White Devil follows a cowherd named Manuel (Geraldo Del Rey) and his wife Rosa (Yoná Magalhães) as they struggle through difficult times in the arid sertão of northeastern Brazil. They live a hardscrabble life in thrall to a callous landowner, who Manuel attacks and kills in a fit of rage at particularly unjust treatment. The couple is forced to go on the lam, and they fall in with a nascent religious cult led by the self-proclaimed saint Sebastião (Lídio Silva), who prophesies a cleansing fire and primes his flock for apocalyptic insurrection. A gruff bounty-hunter named Antônio das Mortes (Maurício do Valle) – who would go on to be the central figure of a 1969 Rocha film, is despatched by local authorities to remedy the situation. After an intense gun battle at the cult’s hilltop retreat, the central duo leave Sebastião dead and find themselves on the run again, this time joining the ranks of rebellious bandit Corisco (Othon Bastos), who has his own bloody war to wage. The film’s narrative, though, is just part of what’s going on.
There was great variation among the styles of films and filmmakers regarded as part of cinema novo, but the first work produced owed much to Italian neorealism. However, rather than a somewhat naturalistic depiction of poverty, Rocha conceived of his aesthetics of hunger as a febrile, interconnected evocation which ‘narrated, described, poeticised, discoursed, analysed, [and] aroused the themes of hunger.’ Rocha was arguably more enamoured of the spirit of the French New Wave and, keen to move beyond the frameworks of traditional cinema, he folded various creative elements into Black God, White Devil that imbue it with its own pyretic energy.
Those elements range from the use of a musical narration – in lyrical descriptive ballads written by Rocha and scored by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Sérgio Ricardo – stilted performances and sometimes glacial pacing to intrusive, stylised sound design and handheld camerawork that bristles with nervous vitality. Rocha was only in his mid-twenties when he made the film, and an audience might see in some of these things the rough edges of a young filmmaker working on a constrained budget. However, he intentionally jostles the components to create a work that coarsely combines the allegorical and the visceral, reality and myth, the frenzy of religious enthusiasm and the deliberate devilry of violent revolt.
The film’s first half sees Manuel become an ardent disciple of Saint Sebastião, despite Rosa’s consternation. In this section, the filmmaking language is that of urgency; time is frequently elided, the camera often adopts positions that create intimate close-ups, and Eisensteinian montage creates dramatic sequences of ferocity and suffering, while the story unfurls some of its most shocking moments. Even when a scene is drawn out, the soundtrack is often loud, intense and discordant. The effect is almost palpable. The torment, desperation and zeal are felt as much as they are observed. Here, violence seems to become the only possible response from those in such straits. The film’s composition mimics its protagonists’ situation: when Manuel and Rosa find themselves aligned with Corisco, the mechanics change. Shot durations are far longer, pacing more deliberate, the location sparse and depopulated, the action a shifting moral dialogue rather than the staccato study of faith seen previously. The sound continues to be somewhat over-produced, but the effect now is not wild immersion but of a creeping unreality, creating a folkloric milieu.
The formally divergent nature of the film’s two halves complicates the way audiences receive the film and forces them to consider its thematic concerns from multiple perspectives. Speaking to Cineaste magazine in 1970, Rocha stated: ‘To make film is to make a contribution to the revolution, to stoke it, in order to make people in Brazil conscious of their condition.’ While some of the takeaways may initially seem incontrovertible and explicit, in Black God, White Devil the politics are far from didactic. They’re complicated and contradictory in such a way as to dislodge preconceptions and – in theory – force the viewer to grapple with the questions that have been raised and to confront a previously unseen truth. For the Brazilian audience of 1964, this meant reckoning with the despairing situation of the poor. To a modern audience, the film demands a level of engagement that undermines the simplistic devotion to or validation of existing beliefs – whether they be political, religious, or cinematic. It’s just one of the many ways the film continues to feel vital and relevant.
Ben Nicholson, Sight and Sound, Winter 2023
Black God, White Devil Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol
Director: Glauber Rocha
Production Company: Copacabana Filmes
Producer: Luiz Augusto Mendes
Associate Producers: Jarbas Barbosa, Glauber Rocha
Production Manager: Agnaldo Azevedo
Assistant Director: Paulo Gil Soares, Walter Lima Jr
Story/Dialogue: Glauber Rocha
Director of Photography/Camera Operator: Waldemar Lima
Key Grip: Roque-Assis
Graphics/Maps: Calazans Neto
Editor: Rafael Valverde
Art Director: Glauber Rocha
Titles: Lygia Pape
Music: [Heitor] Villa-Lobos
Lyrics: Glauber Rocha
Songs Sung/Performed by: Sérgio Ricardo
Sound Recording: Aluizio Viana
Neg Cutting: Lucia Erita
Sound Effects: Geraldo José
Cast
Geraldo Del Rey (Manuel)
Yoná Magalhães (Rosa)
Lidio Silva (Sebastião)
Maurício do Valle (Antonio das Mortes)
Othon Bastos (Corisco)
Sonia dos Humildes (Dadà)
João Gama
Antônio Pinto
Milton Roda
Roque
Brazil 1964
118 mins
Digital
Presented as part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025-26 and supported by Instituto Guimarães Rosa
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
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