The explosive modernist aesthetic of Cinema Nôvo crystalized in Glauber Rocha's Antonio das Mortes. Part samurai, part Sergio Leone, and just as obviously influenced by no one, this is a tale of true desperados: starving peasants and their spiritually desperate exploiters in the parched and punishing sertão. Antonio das Mortes (a character first introduced in Black God, White Devil, see February 13), a hired gun for the landowners, is the most notorious killer of cangaceiros, peasant rebel-bandits in the backlands. The film deals with Antonio's coming to political consciousness in the face of natives who are claiming squatters' rights, of the god-struck young woman who is their spiritual leader, and of the corruption and greed of the landowners he works for. In open-air opera and silent shuffling ballet, spoken verse and sung lore, melodrama of the absurd and gritty Western, Rocha transforms native art, mystical traditions, vibrant colors, and the lore of the cangaceiros to his own flamboyant uses to show "the two faces of vengeance-hatred and love."