Dir. Rogério Sganzerla, 1968, Brazil , 92 mins
Cast: Helena Ignez, Paulo Villaça
As part of the new Brazilian that emerged in the 1960s, The Red Light Bandit throws you headlong into the political turmoil of late 60s Brazil from the first frame and it doesn't let up until the end. This delirious film plays like a Jean Luc Godard inspired ride through the strife and turmoil of Brazil at the time. Taking the Godard maxim of a good movie needing a girl and a gun, Rogério Sganzerla's film puts a gun in the hands of the Red Light Bandit (Paulo Villaça) and features a girl (Helena Ignez) who hooks up with him during the film. The film also deals with political corruption, law and order and prostitution, and includes playful stylistic devices like freeze-frames and multiple voiceovers.
The plot concerns the Red Light Bandit, a notorious criminal who breaks into homes using his torchlight, and rapes and murders the women inside before fleeing. The police investigate the crimes and try to apprehend the Bandit, while the media sensationalise the story. Although the Bandit's crimes are terrible and reprehensible (and Sganzerla doesn't flinch from showing his crimes) the film is also frequently funny. When the bickering voiceovers of a man and woman speculate on the terrible Bandit and his heinous crimes, we often see the Bandit in the most mundane situations (getting out of bed, shaving, getting dressed, etc.) and not in the middle of a crime. Although the Bandit is an unsavoury character, Sganzerla also shows us that he is a pawn in this society, buffeted around and exploited by corrupt politicians, ineffectual police, and even the Bandit's girlfriend.
Long before Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers portrayed criminals as being exploited by a corrupt society (in the form of the media and law enforcement), The Red Light Bandit showed that the representatives of authority in society who were supposed to be morally better than the criminals were hardly respectable, trustworthy citizens. A politician (who likes to be addressed as 'Secretary') makes a series of promises to the people of Brazil whilst indulging in criminal activities of his own, while the police (led by a cynical detective) who are trying to capture the Bandit come across as uncaring, sadistic and ineffectual figures rather than professional investigators.
While the Bandit is clearly reprehensible, the police and the politicians also have contempt for the ordinary people, while pretending to represent their best interests. As bad as the Bandit is, he is what he is and makes no apologies for it, while the authorities merely pretend to be respectable and trustworthy people but are in fact corrupt and incompetent. At one of the Bandit's crime scenes, the detective dismisses the 'intellectuals' who were victims of the Bandit, while the politician will do whatever it takes and use whatever means are necessary (including supposedly having the notorious World War II German officer Martin Boorman on his staff!) to keep the poor in poverty and himself in power.
Like a Godard film, The Red Light Bandit plays less like a conventional film with a linear narrative and more a film essay. The film is a delirious mix of Godardian influences, with echoes of À Bout de Souffle (with the Bandit hooking up with a girlfriend and going on a journey in an open top car) and Pierrot le Fou (with the Bandit involved in a blackly comic ending) to name just two examples. The Red Light Bandit frequently breaks off from its ostensible plot in order to pursue another incident or idea, be it comic (a news report about UFO's) or serious (one scene features real footage of a handcuffed prisoner being beaten up by the authorities).
However, the film does more than simply appropriate the style and technique of the French New Wave. This classic of Brazilian cinema may play with movie conventions in the style of Godard's 60s films, but it's also echoes the French director's radical politics of the time. Sganzerla's film is an angry cry against an oppressive, corrupt system, but he does it in an energetic, humorous way. The Red Light Bandit is a work that will appeal to cineastes and it shows that politically engaging and self-referential were not confined to the French New Wave in the 1960s. The film stands as an exhilarating, kaleidoscopic record of a tumultuous time when the world, and cinema, was going through dramatic changes.
Martyn Bamber
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