Marcelo C. Mello

Cinema Novo versus Beatlemania: Discovering the use of sound and music in two unfilmed and unpublished Brazilian screenplays from the mid-1960s

University of São Paulo, Brazil

In 1967, Brazilian singer Roberto Carlos was the young leader of Jovem Guarda, a cultural and commercial phenomenon inspired by Beatlemania. Left-wing youth rejected Jovem Guarda, considering it an alienating and Americanized subculture. They preferred politically engaged lyrics and melodies inspired by Brazilian popular traditions.

In my conference, I analyze sound and music in two unfilmed screenplays written by filmmakers Sergio Person and Jean-Claude Bernardet: the musical SSS against Jovem Guarda (1966) and The plague of the ruminants (1967). There are very few academic articles written on the former (Bueno, 2015). The latter was the subject of my PhD dissertation (2019).

At the moment when political repression had turned Brazil into a “brutality garden” (Dunn, 2001), why would two leading figures of the politically engaged Cinema Novo suspend the production of a film denouncing torture in political prisons, and instead jump into a commercial project with the “alienating” leader of the Jovem Guarda? Were they being contradictory or visionary?

Their next step was the ambitious The plague of the ruminants, a project that contested the dictatorship. Inspired by magical realism, it would use Hollywoodesque fantastic spectacle (color, dance, music and humor – all of which were considered alienating by Cinema Novo).

By comparing different versions of the screenplay for The plague of the ruminants, I show how military music was replaced by Jovem Guarda style music. Through interesting interventions on the soundtrack, Person and Bernardet subtly denounced Jovem Guarda’s support for the military regime. This ironically contrast with the soundtrack to the unfilmed SSS against Jovem Guarda.

This presentation contributes to studies of sound and music in unfilmed screenplays. I analyze different aspects pertaining to sound and music, compare these screenplays to other completed film projects by Person and Bernardet, and place them in the context of Brazilian culture and politics.

Marcelo Cordeiro de Mello is a postdoctoral researcher (CNPq / University of São Paulo) and Professor. He holds a PhD in Literary Studies (Federal University of Minas Gerais, 2019) and a MA in Literature (Sorbonne, Paris IV, 2011). He completed undergraduate studies in Portuguese and French at the University of Brasília, Brazil. He researches unfilmed film texts. Dr. Mello has taught in Brazil and France and published book chapters and articles in peer reviewed academic journals in Brazil, the United States, France and Portugal.