Samba / Bossa / MPB / Tropicalia movies?

I recently saw <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ0xaG430wg";>Rockers</a>, which is about the late 70s Jamaican Reggae scene. It's one of the most aesthetically perfect movies I remember seeing, in terms of it's ability to capture the pastiche of that time and place.

The dark, greenish, cross-processed film also reminded me of the movie City of God, and it made me want to find a Brazilian movie from the 60s or 70s that encapsulated the music and style of that era.

Are there any 'Bossa' movies? I'll bet there's an Italian one, or maybe an Italian one shot in Brazil. Anyway, maybe this is more a film question than a music one...

Boy, I really butchered that OP. I wish ILX would let you edit posts...

I just thought of one: The three Caballeros.

I guess bossa nova would be associated with "cinema novo," a neorealist style of the early 1960s (1965's São Paulo S/A is a good, noir-ish panorama of the time I think).

Tropicália could be paired with "cinema marginal," the experimental, clandestine movies of the late 60s about the sleazy and crummy underbelly of the country, things like 1970's Sem essa, Aranha and 1968's Hitler III° Mundo. Though I guess the more excessive, technicolor works by Glauber Rocha (I'm thinking A idade da terra in particular) feels truer to tropicália's actual sound, though that movie was made 2 decades after tropicália fizzled out.

Three Caballeros is incredible, one of my favorite Disney movies. It has a companion, Saludos Amigos, which also has a Brazilian musical sequence.

(also love Rockers, such a great film fwiw)

There is a live film of a music festival where Caetano Veloso returns to Brazil to perform some of the material from Araca Azul and it is p freaky, he looks like a skeleton and does these weird proto-David Byrne dance moves. I can't remember the title of it off the top of my head but I have a burnt DVD copy of it at home, will try to find it.

I think it's from 1973 or so?

also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Orpheus is essential

Yeah, Black Orpheus seems like the quintessential boss movie. Carlos Diegues' Quilombo has a couple songs by Gilberto Gil on the soundtrack, and kinda feels pretty MPB. Glauber Rocha sings Divino, Maravilhoso in Godard's Le Vent d'Est, which is perhaps the most tropicalia scene ever. It's homaged in the Alumbramento group film Road to Ythaca, which is from 2010, but captures the sense of the sixties very, very well.

Yes.

I do need to see Black Orpheus. I'm going to make it a priority.

There's a quality to a lot of MPB albums that I wish was committed to film:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSEVtju-SbhYkT7ZmfgE7TMxQztgpkm0GieX7AUKsHV6kTP4syI9Ahttps://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRU7y4lgAEA8kO7T4Tu3EMowkAG3rySpZR4RJ7ZFhQNTm5g7YsFhttps://img.discogs.com/iHkMncyX6T8z3zNuFnk9MN_9UsU=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-7489864-1442536126-2551.jpeg.jpg

These albums all sound how they look, and the album covers all remind me of something I can't quite put my finger on--like an episode of Flipper, or sonething.

Are there any good books in English on MPB?

The Brazilian Sound by Chris McGowan is ok. I haven’t read Ruy Castro’s book on Bossa Nova.

Yeah I skimmed the McGowan a little and it definitely struck me as just ok and maybe not worthy of the music.

Charles Perrone's Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song is pretty good on MPB, lots of translations, solid stuff on Gil, Buarque, etc. Nothing much on Tom Ze, though. Ruy Castro's book on bossa is one of the best books ever written on any musical form, definitive as far as I can tell.

Thanks

Highly recommend the book Hello, Hello Brazil: Popular Music in the Making of Modern Brazil by Bryan McCann, for an in-depth look at some of the earlier, pre-Bossa styles of Brazilian music.

OK, so it doesn't look like Brazil, itself, had much of a film industry in the 20th century. However, I did find a German movie called Rio 70, shot in Rio, that's absolute Bossa perfection:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWhriKVQehA

If you sign in, you can watch The full movie on youtube.

I don't know about industry, but they certainly had a nouvelle vague and a grindhouse circuit of their own.

They had a fairly big and fairly iconic film culture. Carmen Miranda anyone? Long periods with censorship made it tough for a long time, though.

<3 baby consuelo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlm_SIw2YnI

Wow - thanks for posting that, it's amazing.

Cool video. I've never seen Un Homme Et Une Femme, but it seems that parts of it are an ode to Samba music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzW3ForpdMM

I don't think this is quite what the OP had in mind but here are two Ruy Guerra films with peak-era Milton Nascimento soundtracks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEJbK7rPE4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-iQuloGEI4

(I think Wagner Tiso might actually be the composer on the first one but obviously Milton is featured)

Ooh, thanks for these

Here's the incredible "Samba Saravah" by Baden Powell with Pierre Barouh (who is in the film) isolated from Un Homme Et Une Femme which isn't really an ode to Samba except for the song (although it's one of my favorite movies).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC0V1GqBVl4

And here's Powell and Barouh singing the song in an amazing video I've never seen before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li-hg5XsvJU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz-hjB_acsg

Wow