SUBJECTS

Brazil -- Discovery and exploration -- French -- 16th century -- Drama, Cannibalism -- Brazil -- Drama, Explorers -- Brazil -- Drama

How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman

(Como era gostoso o meu Francês)

New Digital Restoration

  • Introduction

    Natalia Brizuela teaches in UC Berkeley’s Departments of Film and Media and Spanish and Portuguese and is interim director of the Arts Research Center.

featuring

Arduíno Colasanti, Ana Maria Magalhães, Eduardo Imbassahy Filho, Manfredo Colasanti,

A slyly entertaining mixture of anthropology, black humor, gorgeous color photography, sixteenth-century history, political allegory, ubiquitous nudity, and unsettling prophecy. A Frenchman captured by Indians tries nobly to integrate himself with the savage mind, but true incorporation into the tribe is ultimately possible only in one way: through the stomach. Dos Santos’s film nearly caused a riot when shown at Cannes and finally had to be withdrawn—officially for reasons of “excessive nudity,” although many observers felt that the problem was the naked lunch with a French entree. This is a wicked metaphor of European cultural and economic cannibalism turning to genocide, but also, as Robert Stam points out, a commentary on the dictatorship’s own Transamazonian Highway that provided an “escape valve” for the northeast’s poor (as seen in Barren Lives) to move south and help exploit the Amazon region and its previously unknown peoples.

Film Society of Lincoln Center
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Cinematographer
  • Dib Lutfi
Language
  • Portuguese
  • Tupi
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 84 mins
Source
  • Regina Filmes
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman documents  

Latin America: Brazil: How tasty was my little Frenchman (distributor materials), New Yorker Films, 1995

Magie Brasiliens: Nelson Pereira dos Santos (program note), Filmfest München, 1995

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, the father & conscience of Brazil's cinema novo (program), Film Society of Lincoln Center, 1995

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, cinema novo's "Spirit of light" (program), Film Society of Lincoln Center, Kathleen Murphy, 1995

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, cinema novo's "spirit of light" (program), Film Society of Lincoln Center, David Neves, 1995

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, the father and conscience of Brazil's cinema novo (program), Harvard Film Archive, 1995

How tasty was my little Frenchman (distributor materials), New Yorker Films, 1993

Brazilian Cinema--excerpt. How tasty was my little Frenchman (book excerpt), Associated University Presses, Richard Peña, 1982

Film: How tasty was my little Frenchman (review), Village Voice, Tom Allen, 1978

How tasty was my little Frenchman (review), Soho Weekly News, NC, 1978

Displaying 10 of 16 publicly available documents.


View all How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman documentation on CineFiles.