Word: macunaima
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...adult black actor who plays the young Macunaima is a superb comedian: strutting almost spastically in a yellow sack, he combines the goonish petulance of Jerry Lewis with exaggerated indolence and lasciviousness. Yet he is still such a child that his mother, who sleeps beneath him in the lower of two hammocks, takes an umbrella with...
...brothers leave for the city when they are flooded out, and on the way Macunaima bathes in a magic fountain which turns him white--and into another actor. This white actor goes through several changes of hairstyle, which as far as I can tell have nothing to do with either plot or political significance, and which typify the director's casual attitude to details. During several crowd scenes some of the extras look more interested in the camera than in the antics of Macunaima, and when Macunaima dies, bloodily, in a stream, a rubber hose can dimly be seen pumping...
However, such faults do not much mar Macunaima as they might a more tightly-constructed film. The atmosphere is more one of frivolity, with nothing to be taken too seriously. Even the censors, apparently, could do little but laugh. They had nothing but sex to object to since the only difference between Macunaima and the capitalist villain Venceslau is that the villain has all money can buy and wants more; while Macunaima has no money but does possess all that villain wants; charm, good looks, and the girls to prove...
...fight it out, Macunaima employing tricks just as dirty as the villain's. He gets himself up as a lonely divorcee to visit Venceslau, but, taking off his disguise behind an inlaid ebony screen, foolishly hands over two tell-tale oranges along with the brassiere. Still, as the narrator observes, "Venceslau is broadminded," and tries to bed the naked Macunaima nevertheless. It is Macunaima, healthily hetero--is this the bounds of the Brazilian revolutionaries or the Brazilian censors?--whose prudery ends the escapade...
...white Macunaima is not as fine an actor as the black, and the humor in the second half of the film depends less on him than on the situations. Except for the marvelous miming talents of the black Macunaima, this is totally the director-writer's film, with thanks too to the cameraman and his almost over-ripe color photography. In addition to the censor's cuts, the picture could still do with a little pruning: some of the scenes run overlong, but not one of them is anything but hilarious while it's happening...