Andy-296 Review of The Cannibals

The Cannibals (1988)

entertaining but eccentric movie from an unique filmmaker

[9/10 · 7 November 2006]

Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira has one of the most unusual careers in the history of cinema. Born in 1908, he made his first movie, a short, in the late 1920s, during the time of silent cinema. He made a few more shorts during the 1930s, but soon came the long Salazar dictatorship, and for decades he was unable to film but for a few movies for censorship reasons, so he retired to manage his family business. Only when democracy was restored in Portugal, in the late 70s, Oliveira was able to return to film-making, when he was around 70. After that, he has been making about a movie a year, seemingly trying to make up for the lost time. He still makes movies today, so unless fate struck, he may soon achieve the remarkable feat of being a 100 year old working filmmaker. Os Canibais, made when he was 80, is a very eccentric movie (no mean feat in Oliveira), being basically a very elegant filmed opera about jealous aristocrats who fight over a virginal bride, ending in an uproariously funny cannibalism act (the gross out element is more imagined that showed). Superficially, it might recall Buñuel, but Oliveira is less interested in being subversive than in exploring (or recalling) older art forms into cinema, like theater and opera, of course. The classical soundtrack is terrific, by the way.