User Reviews

This film tells the story of portuguese poet Luiz Vaz de Camoes (1525-1580), there for a Renaissance poet. As an important introduction, he is one of most, if not the most, important figure of portuguese culture (so you can evaluate for yourself, our national day is the day the poet died, 10 June). Personally speaking, as I am portuguese, I'm glad that this film exists, since it shows an important attempt to pass Portugal's history,which being so rich has been somewhat neglected by portuguese filmmakers, to cinema. I consider the final result pretty positive, and this to be one good example of portuguese 40's cinema. It is true that Camoes is in here reduced to what we perfectly know of him, the director takes no chance in assuming things that might have been true and shows us little of the real depths of the poet's soul (that is in fact the main flaw of the film, we don't get to be shown why was he in fact such a genious and inspired poet as he in fact was...) but than again that gives autenticy and historical reliability to the film. I also enjoy the way you see the character progress throughout the film, in the end he looks and acts really as the old, bittered man he was, as in the beginning looks young, joyful and healthy. This evolution is noticed mainly in my opinion because of the outstanding superb acting of one the greatest gentleman of portuguese cinema, Antonio Vilar who would after this film be invited to several foreign productions, proving the recognition he had after this one. Great moments, among them the ende, Camoes death, really touching, and the scene preceding his departure to India, in which he decides to tell portuguese history in a poem that was to become a sort of portuguese "bible", Os Lusiadas. That scene is very powerful, since the music is excelent along with the images from the walls (and in here I deeply regret the film wasn't coloured because I believe this scene would double its strenght).

Still I have to regret that Camoes exile years were reduced in the film to a mere report on what he did and to a legendary, almost unavoidable scene of the ship wreckage in which he saves his master piece but swimming with only one arm. Those very rich years were very important in his life and put in the film would, I'm shure, make it a real gem, almost another masterpiece (the solution would be to take some time spent in intrigues and romantic misadventures and put it in the journey years). Still those are direction options, maybe also conditioned by financial difficulties. Petty though.

An excelent, I mean five stars note to the soundtrack, by Ruy Coelho, an important portuguese composer, who makes here the right music for the right moments. All the moments have the right music to support them. Also the general acting is very good, petty this generation of portuguese actors wasn't so used in good films like this as it might have been... Though watch this, you may learn something and if you are portuguese notice how well every word of our beautiful language is pronounced, though the film sound (and image) is not so great you can clearly understand every word... I would like to hear this clear sounding portuguese in today's actors...

In this film, directed by Leitão de Barros, we see and remember the adventurous life of Luís de Camoes. Soldier, poet, adventurer, he won the hearts of the ladies of the Portuguese court, traveled the world, stayed in the East, in India and China and ended his life as a poor man who had no money even for a bed where he could die . His name, however, lives in the heart of the Portuguese and the world, as he wrote one of the greatest and most brilliant epic poetry books made today: "The Lusíadas". A film with Antonio Vilar in the lead role.

Camões is remembered as the greatest Portuguese poet of all time, and one of the greatest literary names in Portuguese. His life alone is worth a book or a movie, and it happened in this film, which is a patriotic work and a well-deserved honor. This film, made to exalt Camões and the Portuguese nationalist spirit, is a journey into the past of the country, which was already the richest and most advanced in the world, and the life of one of his most famous historical figures.

Camões is a great production, by national standards, financed by the Estado Novo government, destined to constitute a reference work of Portuguese cinema, which exalts national patriotism and pride and promotes the country's image abroad. It was therefore the first Portuguese film to be presented at the Cannes festival in France.

To this end, the government turned to the regime's filmmaker, António Lopes Ribeiro, to direct a production featuring the biggest names in Portuguese cinema at the time, starting with director Leitão de Barros, perhaps the most prestigious and experienced filmmaker of the time, in Portugal, and a luxury cast, where practically all the great names of national cinema and theater of the time appear, even if only in very brief appearances, as is the case with the popular Vasco Santana and António Silva.

He also used extremely elaborate sets and wardrobe, never before seen in Portuguese cinema, to the point that they had to be made in Spain.

For such an exquisite package, it was essential to find an uncontroversial national jewel that symbolized the best that the Portuguese nation produced. Who better than Camões to fill this role, the bard who sang the maritime epic of the Portuguese, in his impressive epic poem Os Lusíadas?

The problem is that Camões was born and lived almost incognito. Little is known for certain about him, except for half a dozen references in official documents, which attest to his recruitment as a squire for the colonies, and there are records of his passage through Ceuta, Goa, Macau and Mozambique, where he left a reputation as a quarrelsome and deadbeat, the which earned him several stays in prison.

From this small number of data, posterity constructed a fanciful biography of him, based on assumptions and possibilities, put forward by his successive biographers, writing, sometimes, many centuries after his death.

For example, his supposed love for Infanta D. Maria, presented prominently in the film, was mentioned for the first time in a 20th century biography, based on a mere assumption, without any documentary support.

The truth is that nothing is known, with certainty, about Camões's loves, nor where or when he was born and died.

He most likely passed through Coimbra, but there is no record of him at the University, so he would not have completed his studies (contrary to what the film claims), if he even went to university.

His ancient but low nobility, and above all his lack of means, do not lead us to believe that he had, at all, the courtly life presented in the film, in addition to the fact that he embarked for India at the age of twenty-five, after having spent time in Ceuta, where he lost an eye in a battle in the Strait of Gibraltar and not from a gunshot, while raising the national flag, as shown in the film. Another document, however, says that he was imprisoned for three years, before embarking for India, so he only embarked for the East when he was 28 years old, from where he would only return in 1570, already at least at the age of 46 years old. It does not seem, at all, that he had the time or opportunity to attend, with the assiduity shown in the film, either the court of D. João III or that of Infanta D. Maria. It is certain that he was received by D. Sebastião, in 1572, to whom he read the Lusíadas, to the great pleasure of the young king, only 18 years old, who ordered its publication and granted Camões a small pension, which he received, irregularly, and will have supported him, with difficulties, at the end of his life.

Ultimately, everything is obscure in Camões's life, which did not stop his biographers from giving free rein to their imagination and building a vast history, based on tradition and to which, each generation, always added something new. This Camonian mythology resulted from the strong nationalist character of his main work, the Lusíadas, which served as a basis for the reconstruction of national pride and identity, after the collapse of the Avis dynasty, the golden period of the country's history, and the loss of independence, which coincides precisely with the presumed date of Camões' death (1579 or 1580).

Nothing better, therefore, than the Lusíadas, to recover, after the Restoration of Independency, the identity of a people who gave new worlds to the world, through which work and author were successively glorified, over the following centuries, culminating in the civic cult of his statue, inaugurated in the square bearing his name, in 1867, in Lisbon.

It is therefore this mythological Camões that the film presents, in a script by Afonso Lopes Vieira, a poet and not a historian, showing a frivolous and womanizing character, involved in futile palace intrigues that would lead to his exile. From here the immortal bard, troubadour of Lusitanian deeds, would be reborn from the ashes, with the Lusíadas under his arm and the eternal recognition of the nation.

It is the Camonian myth that the film gives expression to, in a shameless act of nationalist propaganda for the regime.

Viewed with amazement and admiration by the portuguese public at the time, due to the greatness of the resources involved, the film ended up aging poorly. The poverty of the narrative, subject to the production apparatus, came to the fore, and instead of the national masterpiece, intended by the Estado Novo, the film is seen today as a curiosity, a work of nationalist propaganda that reflects a time and a form of looking and making history, clearly outdated.

Instead of focusing on the adventures of a soldier poet, who spent most of his life in the colonies, it shows a womanizer, involved in skirt fights, first at the university of Coimbra and then in the Lisbon courts, which earn him exile, of which, in fact, there is no historical reference. Everything points to Camões heading to Ceuta, India, Macau and Mozambique of his own free will and not due to judicial punishment.

A declamatory rhetoric is added to the dialogues, often transformed into monologues, taken from the poet's work, which do nothing to serve the dynamics of the film, but instead show signs of a dubious academic taste of the time.

In short, a dated work, which is worth more as a historical document of the nationalist propaganda of the Estado Novo, than as a biography of Camões or even as a historical drama.

It's a big shame that in my country's people can't understand that this is the closest thing in Portugal to Ben-Hur (it's a pearl not only of Portuguese cinema but of European historic-epic production): it's just like Willer's version of Wallace's novel, a beautiful story of fall in desgrace, redemption and leving our mark for the future, mainly because of one thing: being highly praised and awarded during the fascist regime some moron left wingers panned it as simple propaganda (and the fact that the author was a participant of the one party manifest and that he always kissed the "great leader"'s ass in the press didn't helped). Yes, there is a propaganda side, but it's also an introduction to this poet's life (and a big movie on it's own). Curiosly no one saw the anti-fascist subtext (Leitão de Barros' real opinion of the fascists?): references to the inquisition as censorship and as something that should be feared (not a protection to good manners as the regime told...), a poet (a alter ego of Barros) that just wanted to create his art, but saw his life cursed by political conspiracies from advisers of a "great leader" that thought him self absolute but was always manipulated (a portrait of Salazar?), and his successor, inspired by Camoens's (Camões in Portuguese) epic poem «The Lusiads» («Os Lusíadas») to involve in a war that destroys the realm (a prediction of what would happen to the generations raised by salazarism and didn't knew the previous freedom, losing them selves in wars for the empire?). But the fascists didn't helped this movie a lot (they preferred propaganda docs to fiction films, so most Portuguese movies were short: most not even covered an hole tape!; and the budget wasn't enough for rendering an epic fitting the life of this epic poet with an epic life, although the biggest till then. Because of the lack of budget they had to leave the epic side for the lyric and dramatic one...it's not the same thing! If this difficulties were overcome it could be as long and as enormous as Willer's Ben-Hur). But just like Ben-Hur isn't just for Christians, Camões isn't just for Portuguese, but unfortunately we (the Portuguese)are still bloody dumb and don't realize how important it would be for our country and culture to make this and other movies internationally famous (for the love of God/good! Red western are more famous than this masterpiece!). Also a great score by Portuguese classic composer Ruy Coelho, our Prokofiev.