Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop.
The computer I use for this blog doesn’t actually belong to me; it’s my work laptop. This places certain restrictions on me in terms of what I can and can’t do. When Chip Lary at Tips from Chip sent me a huge chunk of rare films, I convinced my IT guy (and since Mike is cool, it didn’t take much effort) to let me store these films directly on my hard drive. Since then, I’ve been trying to take out these rarities at a pretty regular pace. Because these films are rarities, I go into them pretty cold. I watched Terra em Transe (Earth Entranced, sometimes called Entranced Earth) knowing nothing more than that it was Brazilian and came from the late 1960s.
This is the story of Paulo Martins (Jardel Filho), a journalist and poet living in the fictional Central (or South) American country of Eldorado. He is a man of the people, wanting to bring happiness and prosperity to the land. To do this, he latches onto two politicians, each very different in important ways, but identical in the ways that matter. Both are opportunist and tell people what they want to hear to achieve and retain power. The president of the country is the conservative Porfirio Diaz (Paulo Autran), while the governor of the area is a populist who doesn’t practice what he claims to preach. This is Felipe Vieira (Jose Lewgoy). Vierira and Diaz hate each other, but both are connected to Paulo.
