Limite (Mario Peixoto, 1931)

Olga Breno in Limite

 Cast: Olga Breno, Tatiana Rey, Raul Schnoor, Brutus Pedreira, Carmen Santos, Mario Peixoto, Edgar Brasil, Iolanda Bernardes. Screenplay: Mario Peixoto. Cinematography: Edgar Brasil. Film editing: Mario Peixoto.

Limite is a film for cinéastes, by which I mean anyone who feels compelled to watch almost anything that has a measure of acclaim from other cinéastes. I don't know that I fall neatly into that category, since I have some expectation from films that is satisfied only by the ones that have a coherent narrative. Limite almost has that, but only in hindsight and in reading what others tell me about it. Left to my own devices, I don't know that I would have figured out that the film is about the memories or past experiences of the three people, two women and a man, who are seated in a boat, aimlessly drifting in the sea. And even having been told that, I'm not sure I can make it cohere in my memory of watching the film. But Limite has a reputation as a great experiment, a film made by Mario Peixoto, a 22-year-old poet who never made another one though he lived to be 83. It was exhibited in his native Brazil shortly after it was made, and though it was caviar to the general it acquired some admirers of the years, including Orson Welles and David Bowie, but like the vast majority of movies, especially silent ones, it suffered from neglect until it was restored in 2010 and became widely available. I found it oddly hypnotic, especially in its use of a shrewdly assembled pastiche of musical themes by a variety of composers, including Satie, Debussy, Stravinsky, Borodin, and Prokofiev, which underscore and perhaps illuminate what's being done and felt by the people on screen. I doubt that I would have responded to it as positively as I did without the soundtrack, which is only to say that I expect cinema to be distinct from other visual arts like painting and still photography, which don't need to be "sweetened" by music to make their effect. There are some lovely images in Limite but they tease us into wanting them to fall into emotional and narrative shape. Life is so full of unanswered questions that I expect art to help us toward answering them. So if you watch Limite asking why these three people are in this boat together, you may find yourself hungering for more conventional film. Unconventional, let's say, isn't always a good thing.