Word: villainizing
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...book was The Pale Horse, a vintage Christie whodunit (1961) in which the villain plots to kill some factory workers with thallium, a tasteless, soluble and highly toxic substance that had never before been used on humans as a poison in Britain. The "fellow" was Graham Frederick Young, 24, who did precisely what Dame Agatha predicted could be done. Last month he was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering two of his fellow workers at a small photographic-equipment factory in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire, by dosing their tea and coffee with thallium...
...reality, writer-director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade has left all the heavy analysis behind and concentrated on a picaresque comedy that has about as much relevance as, say, the Marx Brothers--who did, to be sure, portray their share of dirty capitalists, insatiable lovers, and corrupt millionaires. The villain of Macunaima is just such a dirty capitalist, a fat greedy man who is eventually eaten alive in his own cannibal-capitalist swimming pool human soup when Macunaima, the hero, pushes him in. However, Macunaima himself is hardly poor, and anything but honest...
...SOON meets the villain, vanquishes him, and returns to the jungle, where he dies alone at the teeth of Uiara, a water-nymph-cannibal. Hanging from this framework is a series of absurd encounters with de Andrade's representatives of Brazilian society...
...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...