To be a rogue in the country of the dictatorship: humor, mockery and politics in the movies made by Hugo Carvana

Abstract

In 1973, after consolidating himself as a professional actor, Hugo Carvana started directing movies. Proposing an approximation between two different artistic heritages, the film genre of the “chanchadas” and the Cinema Novo movement, the filmmaker made humorous feature films, debauched comedies, in which he established critical readings to Brazil of the military dictatorship. Influenced by the dramaturgy of Vianinha, in the perspective of undressing social contradictions present in the country, Carvana developed a popular filmography, inserted in the cultural industry, in which he opposes the values of the bourgeois universe. Writing their screenplays in partnership with Armando Costa, the filmmaker directed, during the 1970s, the movies “Vai trabalhar, vagabundo” (1973) and “Se segura, malandro” (1978), in which he proposed an ironic refusal to the conservative ideology in defense of capitalist progress and the work ethic. Through a compliment of cheating and “good” trickery, treated in his movies as a resistance of the poor to authoritarian forces, Carvana developed a romantic approach to the popular class, representing it as an irreverent detour to bourgeois ideology. Celebrating the wit of the poor people’s, the filmmaker found in humor a way of refuting social hierarchies, thus exposing the malaise of Brazilian society during the dictatorship.