to Teresa this old film of ours
In those days we led a hard life.
We wanted to make films and, having just returned from London
with our poor but suitably deluded minds,
we were the classic figure of the enthusiast.
The year was 1965
and many an innocence would in the meantime be ravished.
This country, gentlemen, is a bottomless pit,
an asshole one can't escape from.
At any rate, a film, even though formless
and sketchy as a dead-born,
is a foretaste of our own history,
the silent projection of our spectres.
That's all.
Let us move on without regrets.
HE GOES LONG BAREFOOT THAT WAITS FOR DEAD MEN'S SHOES
a cinematic proverb
with
assistants
sound image
music
a film written by and subsidised by
What on earth? Now there's cockroaches falling from the ceiling?
Disgusting!
A guy gets up early to scrape together a few maravedis
and what's he got to show for it?
Anyway, I can't Iet this Iady slip away.
My old man used to say
that to Iet a Iady slip away is to get off on a Iame foot.
I thought of treating her to a fancy dinner.
How about a fancy dinner?
After dinner the Iadies get all sweet and rosy-cheeked.
It's about time you gave up being an idiot and a Russian novelist.
Have you done it yet?
Monica is not Iike that.
I'm telling you, she's different.
Twenty years old. A Literature degree.
She sits in a corner and stays Iike this Iistening to Bach.
She gets pregnant through her ears and aborts through her eyes.
Music is the antechamber of death.
You wanna grab a bite to eat?
I don't feel Iike it, Mário. I don't feel Iike it, Marius.
What I need is to pull some money together big time,
to start I don't know what, I don't know how.
A comical tour to I don't know where, I don't know why.
This one's dead and gone!
Disgusting!
Your mentor says somewhere
that "it's harder to renounce Iove than to renounce Iife".
That's because in this Iife Iove doesn't belong
to each individual creature.
We're forced to beg for it resentfully,
and being so ungrateful is what saves us.
My dear pile of slobber and snot. My dear this or that.
I've been through this, and what I've been through
doesn't begin to make up for what I managed to scrape together.
It may be that I'II turn into a raving Iunatic,
and why not? - touch wood -,
what's stopping me?
Sure enough, today's my Iucky day
if Iivid Livío is going to take the damsels out for a stroll.
Week's mass...
Passed away... passed away...
Come on: I've figured out how you can get your hands on some money!
Sopas, Sachetti, Scott Fitzgerald, Sade, Marquis de, Sayonara,
Saint-Tropez, Shackles, Saladas... There you are: Saladas!
Write it down!
Bold seamen rise above the rest In both Iand and sea!
I don't know if I have the nerve to pull it off.
Let me do the talking. You just have to put on a sad face.
Wouldn't it be better to write a Ietter?
Something along the Iines of: two poor students,
having nowhere else to turn to and having been informed
of the demise of your Excellency's husband,
the valiant Admiral Saladas,
thus wish to express their most sincere and heartfelt condolences...
... For such an irretrievable Ioss...
and plead with your benevolent heart...
your saintly heart...
knowing that by showing compassion towards the sorrow of others
you shall mitigate your own.
We plead with you to spare us some of the deceased's warm clothes
to help us endure the hardships of Winter.
Madam cannot welcome you herself, but she sends this
with a few clothes in it. They were meant for some poor beggar...
Listen, Pretty-eyes, tell your mistress
our hearts are with her in the painful occurrence
that was the death of so noble a figure
both as husband and as seaman.
Our gratitude will forever be with her, wherever our feet may trod.
Rosinda!
Dear me!
The dead man's feet were Ionger than a toad's tongue.
They'II probably give you blisters on your big toes.
I sure needed a pair, but these are only good for the Opera.
I say hock the Iittle buggers! Hock'em!
It's been ages since I Iast set my foot in the Opera.
So what... I couldn't care Iess.
We have to hurry up to get to the hockshop.
How much do you reckon they'II give us?
Not much. One must follow a strict regime.
People of Portugal: Africa is burning.
But why is Africa burning?
- Have you got your ID card with you? - Yes sir, I do.
- And how much do you need? - Five hundred escudos.
- We can only give you two hundred. - That's very Iittle.
The ring cost a Iot more, didn't it?
It's daylight robbery, what you gentlemen do here.
That may be, madam, but the fact is we can only give you two hundred.
Then I'II take them, thank you very much.
Three hundred for the whole Iot!
Don't forget your shoes!
They offered three hundred, the sons of bitches.
I keep fifty to help with expenses.
That wouldn't be decent of me. You had all the trouble.
At Ieast fifty-fifty.
Next time Iet me know in advance.
I hate it when I'm forced to improvise.
There won't be a next time.
Look at the watch hands.
What do you see when you Iook at the watch hands?
Nothing much.
I close my eyes and I'm in the middle of the sea.
The sea is blissful.
Nothing stirs.
Time was worn away by silence.
In the distance, a country with no past and no future.
Singular and miraculous.
I open my eyes and I recognise nothing but your eternity.
I suppose it's getting Iate. You have to go home.
Don't talk nonsense.
I stayed because I wanted to.
In fact, it's rather nice here.
You can see the city.
Well. I'm wasted and at a Ioss for words.
Says it. Does it. Says he'II do it, but won't do it.
Undoes it.
Would you Iike to cover me with white flowers?
I'II confess a secret.
Or rather:
if I were to write my confessions I would start off Iike this:
I carry with me at all times the skull of poor Yorick...
A gentle, gracious movement of the eyes on nothing fixed,
a gentle, open smile forced almost,
an expression without guile
that when joy beckons holds back, humbly wise
A quiet and reserved self-confidence
A spirit shy and serious, at rest
A simple goodness making manifest
A soul free of all dullness and pretence
A boldness within bounds, a gentleness
A guiltless fear, an air of no commotion
A tolerance obedient and kind:
This was for me the heavenly Ioveliness of a new Circe,
this is the magic potion
Whose drug has power to transform my mind
You have a beatiful voice when you read Camões.
Do you Iike Camões?
Mónica, Mónica, Mónica, don't Ieave me.
The ghost added just before the Iight completely engulfed him.
Who, but Iife itself, has the gift of touching Iife?
What time do you usually have dinner?
It varies a lot.
I like to have dinner like the birds. Here and there.
I'd like to live a free life, but with parents around it's useless.
They're a pain in the neck.
Don 't your parents say anything when you're not home on time?
My father was a melancholy guy.
He hunted flies and read Camilo.
He died.
My mum other looks at me in disappointment.
For no reason.
I think.
I don't know.
Let's say I hesitate between a grave world and the gravity of the world.
You wouldn't understand.
Maybe I'll go mad enough to scream "Ah me! Ah me!".
One of these days I'll go away.
Paris, Rome, Milano, London Town,
Florence, the beautiful, Cesário Verde, St. Petersburg - the World.
In the end, crimes are things that keep repeating themselves.
Attention please!
All passengers for the train running on track 2,
the express train for Porto, please proceed to...
I don 't know anything.
I don't know anything.
I don't know anything?
I don't know anything!
And when he turned around, his Ioved one had vanished.
As if the earth had swallowed her.
He searched for her everywhere,
incessantly chasing after that cherished image,
and then, one day, exhausted and deprived,
among other possessions, of his reason,
he became aware that it was himself he was calling out for.
Orpheus, having forgotten his chant,
could do nothing but display the inaccuracy of his gloomy face.
Oh! It's you, Lívio.
I don't want you to come around anymore!
HYPOTHESIS
"Cinema is a fraud (Godard),
"but that fraud should may be overcome.
"I shall return with Iimbs of iron, dark skin, a furious eye:
"from my mask, I shall be judged as belonging to a mighty race.
"I shall have gold: I shall be idle and brutal.
"Women take care
"of these ferocious invalids
"returned from hot countries.
"I shall become involved
"in political matters.
"Saved.
"At present I am dammed,
"I Ioathe the fatherland.
"The best thing of all
"is a good drunken sleep
"on the beach".
Mónica!
In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not,
as they are now, cut off from each other.
They were, besides, quite different-
neither beings nor colours nor shapes were the same.
Both kingdoms, the specular and the human,
Iived in harmony-
you could come and go through mirrors.
One night the mirror people invaded the earth.
Their power was great,
but at the end of bloody warfare
the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed.
He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors,
and forced on them the task of repeating,
as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men.
He stripped them of their power and of their forms
and reduced them to mere slavish reflections.
Nonetheless, a day will come when that magic languor will be shaken off.
The first to awaken will be the Fish.
Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line
and the colour of this line will be like no other colour.
Later on, other shapes will begin to stir.
Little by little they will differ from us-
Iittle by little they will not imitate us.
They will break through the barriers of glass or metal
and this time they will not be defeated.
Side by side with these mirror creatures,
against the creatures of water they will join the battle.
Some believe that before the invasion
we will hear the clatter of weapons from the depths of mirrors.
You 'd better Ieave. It's getting chilly.
Like a dog, he said,
and it was as if his shame outlived him.