Limit (1931) User Reviews

Less than meets the eye

[metroart · 6/10 · 8 November 2019]

The real Limite, as opposed to its myth, is an elaborate experimental home movie made by a very bright 22-year-old, getting his rocks off about his frustrated love life -- an affair with a married woman. The film got produced only because of his family's wealth and connections -- but after it was made, no one in Brazil would distribute it, so it disappeared from sight and gradually languished into a "cult film."

It's worth a look for its ravishing flashes of brilliance, and especially for its use of the camera as an active participant -- allowed to express the frustration & rage that the characters are "limited" from expressing openly (as extra-marital relationships were still a taboo subject in Brazil in 1930?). But without the musical sound track assembled from well-known compositions by Satie, Debussy, Stravinsky, etc. it'd be unwatchable for most of its 2 hours of meandering and deliberately veiled self-indulgence.

A cinematic masterpiece? On a par with films by Dreyer or Vigo or Welles? That's just Brazilian hype. Apparently abetted by the director himself who in 1965 -- out of yet more frustration & rage at the poor reception his magnum (and only) film opus had received -- published a Portuguese translation of a glowing review by none other than "Sergei Eisenstein" -- but no one could locate the original, and Peixoto finally acknowledged, shortly before his death in 1992, that he had penned it himself.

Limite

[jboothmillard · 6/10 · 9 March 2020]

This Brazilian silent film has appeared in all copies of the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die so far, I'm glad I found a way to watch it. Basically, in a drifting small boat, two women (Olga Breno and Tatiana Rey) and a man (Raul Schnoor) recalls their recent past. One of the women has escaped from prison; the other has left an oppressive and unhappy marriage; and the man is in love with someone else's wife. They have no further strength or desire to live and have reached the limit of their existences, so they make little to no effort to be rescued. Their pasts are conveyed in flashbacks throughout the film. This film is considered a provocative and legendary cult classic, with impressive experimental use of cinematography, which would have been quite revolutionary at the time, and an unusual structure, a worthwhile silent classic drama. Okay!

The Lack of Limits of Poetic Control

[Quinoa1984 · 6/10 · 29 July 2021]

Limite is the kind of abstract film, where the author behind it, Peixoto (as director, scenarist, producer, editor, cameraperson and I'm sure protectionist for that splendid "Carlito" Charlie Chaplin scene taken from The Adventurer), is out to create a distinct and practically unrelenting mood that cinema can indeed express, that I don't think I would have had the attention span or patience for ten or fifteen years ago. Have I built up more cinematic fiber to the point where an excursion into the realm of that idiom critics love to throw around but gets used sometimes too much, a Tone Poem on celluloid, where I can find not only sections of this fascinating but intriguing as to where something might go next? It's hard to say exactly, except that by a certain point in my life I find myself connecting morr with more intricate visual flows of images and cuts and am curious as to how long a director like this can take a single image much less a sequence or Kuhleshov set up... if only it weren't quite this long.

I completely get the two sides of an audience coin for this, that someone might turn it on (via the recently restored, to the best of the World Cinema cum Brazil cinema foundations abilities, on blu ray on Criterion) and find it punishing in its lack of any traditional narrative momentum. And to an extent I get those who think the word "Masterpiece" in the description isn't even high praise enough, like the one moment where the camera following behind the one woman walking depressedly along, as she does through much of her flashbacks, and then pivots to get close on a bug resting on a small flower off to the side is worthy of a chapter in a dissertation on the whole thing, or that imposing image of the man in that hat and suit walking along like he owns all. I'm somewhere in the middle, but I want to be more positive than not.

A film like Limite was made at a time, not least of which by a director at 22 who was formed by a medium before sync sound came in to the picture quite literally, when how to express an idea or series of new and experimental ideas visually was being discovered seemingly each week, each day, all over the world. While there is this flashback uh we can call it a structure I suppose to what's happening here, albeit with very few intertitles between characters talking (I may be able to count them on one hand), this strikes me as closer to a Visual Symphony of sorts or a cavalcade of images ala Dziga Vertov, only instead of it being a place like Berlin or Russia it's a small village in Brazil where nature and the objects inside the buildings takes precedence over the direct feelings of people... OK is that accurate? Maybe there's just so much beauty and misery in the world these three, the two women and the men, one feels like they can't take it, right?

In other words, there was and there still is a place for a work like Limite which means to explore through a rhythm that is, frankly, slower paced and (another dreaded word) meditative series of not events but wanderings and this sense of loneliness and perpetual desolation, which seems to also reflect the mood in this little boat out in the sea that we don't exactly know how they got on to or why they can't just leave (as an aside I saw someone compare this to Un chien Andalou for Latin America and nope don't see it sorry but that element of dedicated surrealism to the situstion of these three can call Bunuel in his later period).

There are even some moments where we get at least suggestions of lives lived in a certain way or class or tradition that the film itself may be breaking apart, seen most clearly in a scene at the cemetery where a dramatic confrontation occurs around a parentage. Other times, I get the feeling the director means to keep human interactions to a distinct remove or distance, whether it's shots of feet or shoes as characters speak together or when two meet on a street we see it in two shots cut together that are from afar and in this bizarre looking-up way that obscures their faces.

Maybe part of that is meant to connect to the fuzziness of memory, of how a mind picks and chooses things... or is it hallucination as may be want to happen when stranded on a boat without any amenities? This is a film that has very expressive and creative camera work and some dazzling and dizzying editing - when that one man is calling out in repeated motion (mayhap like stanzas repeated in a poem or song or musical piece) and the camera rushed along like someone is rushing along, it's thrilling - and other times it's simply about solitude and disarray. Again, something very much worthy to express in a film. But I can't say I wasn't also tried by the film, at times left wanting more, that two hours makes this a lot to endure. Even Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh would be like "Enough" with the many, many shots of Soggy gray clouds.

To put it in a harsher sense, Limite is a film I'm glad exists, yet I'd be lying if I said it wasn't more engaging for me to write about than experience; later films that are the children of this sort of deliberatice poetic expression, of people more as ideas of psychology and emotions than people we can live through but have more symbolically to chew on, like Tarkovsky and Resnais films, are more my speed.

(PS: One last thing; it may be incidental, but there are points in this film where clearly the restoration team did the best they could but parts seem to be coming apart and are almost blowing away throug the wear and tear of the elements, and yet that isn't a distraction for me - on the contrary I find that to be overwhelming in this larger sense as someone who watches a lot of films, how fragile the entire medium can be (or once was). If this is an artifact of a specific time and place, how easily it can fall apart makes it still very special, quality of the substance of what was shot besides. So, God bless you, Saulo Pereira de Mello for your efforts to save this film.)

Notes on "Limite"

[michael-korfmann · 15 September 2004]

"Limite", filmed in 1930 and first exhibited in 1931, has over the last 70 years become a legendary cult movie in Brazil, voted several times as one of the best Brazilian movie ever made, and may be considered as the only reference for Brazilian poetic-experimental films of the silent area. What we have here is a film that pretends to combine the idea of a pure, "absolute" cinema - not tied to "realistic" narrative structures and trusting overall the camera – eye as the protagonist - with a poetic reflection on memory and time, a theme explored also in a 6-volume novel by Peixoto called "The uselessness of each one". As many young Brazilians from rich families who later formed the intellectual and artistic elite at the beginning of the 20th century, Peixoto received important artistic stimulus from Europe.

In 1927, at the age of 19, Peixoto spent almost a year at the "Hopedene School" in Willingdon near Eastbourne, Sussex, where he discovered a certain inclination towards acting and developed a strong appreciation for the cinema. Peixoto would return to Europe in 1929 with the expressive intension to see the latest cinema productions. Fascination for the cinema, contacts with critic/ writer Octavio de Farias, cameraman Edgar Brazil, director Adhemar Gonzaga, (Peixoto participated in the shooting of "Barro Humano" (Human Clay, a film from 1927) and the discussions held in the Chaplin Club, laid the ground work for the idea of making his own movie, where he would figure as an actor. The Chaplin Club, made up of a loose circle of friends, was founded in 1928 and until 1930 published a magazine called "The fan" dedicated to debates on the esthetics of silent cinema.

According to Peixoto, he got his final inspiration for "Limite" in august 1929. While walking through Paris he saw a photograph in the 74th edition of the French magazine "VU", a magazine which Man Ray had worked for, by the way. It was this picture that led to the writing of the scenario for "Limite", published only in 1996. The hand-written scenario was then offered to director friends Gonzaga and Mauro. But both declined. They advised him to make the film himself and to hire cameraman Edgar Brazil who had the necessary experience to guarantee the realization of the project. Shooting then began in mid 1930, using specially imported film material with a high sensitivity for grey scales and stills from Limite were soon distributed and, in an effort to raise the public expectation, they were frequently presented as photos from a new Pudovkin movie. The first screening took place on May 17th 1931 in the Capitol Cinema Rio, a session organized by the Chaplin Club, which announced "Limite" as the first Brazilian film of pure cinema. It received excellent reviews from the critics who saw the film as an original Brazilian "avant-garde" production, but also rejection by part of the audience. "Limite" never made it into commercial circuits and over the years was screened only sporadically, as in 1942 when a special session was arranged for Orson Wells (who was in South America for the shooting of the unfinished "It' s all true") and for Maria Falconetti, lead actress of Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928). Limite remained the only film ever completed by Mário Peixoto, even though he tried to realize different projects until mid 80s.

In 1959, the nitrate film began to deteriorate and two dedicated fans, Plinio Süssekind and Saulo Pereira de Mello, started a frame-by-frame restoration of the last existing copy and "Limite" only returned to festivals and screenings in 1978. The legend around the film increased when Mário Peixoto withdrew to an island living in a mansion which was a gift from his father, and he spent most of his fortune transforming it into a private museum stuffed with antiques. Due to financial problems, he later had to sell this property and move into in a small hotel where he reactivated his literary ambitions, working on his novel as well as on poems, theater plays and short stories. His final years were spent in a small flat in Copacabana, where he died in 1992 and he only survived a severe illness in the 80s because of the financial support of Walter Salles, probably today's most successful Brazilian director and producer. ("Central of Brazil", "Motorcycle Diaries", producer of "City of Good", planning his next project once again with Robert Redford – who co produced the "Diaries" – filming "No Caminho das Baleias", adaptation of a novel from Chile writer Francisco Coloane). It was also Walter Salles who in 1996 founded the "Mario Peixoto Archive" located in his production firm "Videofilmes" in Rio, where Saulo Pereira de Mello – one of the restores of Limite - and his wife take care of the original manuscripts and objects from Limite, and edit publications by and on Peixoto.

Poetic and Impressive Exhibition of Pictures in Movement

[claudio_carvalho · 10/10 · 1 May 2005]

In a drifting small boat, two women and a man recall their recent past. One of the women escaped from the prison; the other one was desperate; and the man had lost his lover. They have no further strength or desire to live and have reached the limit of their existences. Why they are together in this boat it is not clearly explained (or understood by me).

"Limite" is a Brazilian piece of art. The storyline is very simple, but the images are amazing, being a poetic and impressive exhibition of pictures in movement. The rhythm is very slow paced and sometimes the viewer certainly will get tired, but it is worthwhile. Mário Peixoto was sixteen years old when he directed this film. The film had been vanished for more than forty years, and was retrieved and partially restored in the 70's by Saulo Pereira de Mello and Plínio Sussekind. One small part was completely lost, and there is one reel in a very bad condition. The soundtrack, with magnificent musics of Borodin, Cesar Frank, Debussy, Prokofieff, Ravel, Satie and Strawinsky fits perfectly to this movie. "Limite" follows European standards, and in accordance with a Brazilian Video Guide, in a previous exhibition in London for filmmakers, Sergei Eisenstein was the first one to recognize the geniuses of "Limite", followed by Vsevolod Poudovkine. I believe that watching this movie is basic for any movie lover or student. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Limite" ("Limit")

Obs.: On 12 November 2005 and 28 November 2007, I saw this magnificent movie again.

In Brazil, the term "seamstress" is considered to be synonymous with . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 6/10 · 12 December 2020]

. . . "shameless strumpet" or "horrid harlot," so much so than many if not most Brazilian men spontaneously experience their Ultimate Pleasure at the mere sight of a threaded needle or even an empty spool lying next to a discarded thimble. Under these circumstances, it's not surprising that the Morality Board of this South American state throughout their history have automatically tagged any film brazen enough to picture a sewing machine in action with the equivalent of a U.S. "Triple X" rating. However, LIMITE is a "Blue Movie" so ancient (it's literally falling apart, and many key scenes have rotted away forever) that it circulated to a fair extent in its home country way back when (though 99% plus of its first-run audience have bitten the dust by now, of course). Imagine how disconcerted one of these deceased gentlemen would be if he was given another night to roam the Earth and saw a clueless Old Movies TV hostess with no situational awareness of "seamstresses" in the Classic Brazilian sense naively screening LIMITE for U.S. family audiences!

Great classic, and visually very impressive.

[MR 17 · 10/10 · 16 November 1999]

This is an absolute brazilian classic, and I wouldn´t be too patriot to call it as an international classic as well, altough it must be very hard for foreigners to be able to see this one. There isn´t much of a story, but Mário Peixoto (who never directed any other film in his life) give us a very stylistic film, in which, as in all silent films, what matters is what is shown, and not what is told. In fact, there are only two "dialogs" in the whole movie.

Limite is almost a filmed poetry, and we´re carried away by its smooth rhythym and great visual power. A must-see picture.

Beautiful Images, Minimalist Plot

[ecapes · 7/10 · 10 October 2021]

While most people seem to love or hate this film, I have mixed feelings. It is a beautiful, slow-paced film, about emotion rather than actions or events. Limite is full of beautiful black and white film images that are beautiful to look at, as long as one is willing to just sit back and enjoy the scenery. Eventually however, the scenery becomes too repetitious. I think a more experienced filmmaker would have edited the film down a bit, but instead every artistic shot was kept.

The scenario (plot is too strong a word) involves three people adrift in a rowboat. The three have each cut themselves off from the world, and we see in their memories their separate paths to isolation. The memories are not the structured flashbacks normally used to advance a narrative, but instead shown as flashes of imagery, closer to the randomness of true human memories. The process works well for the first half, building an atmosphere of isolation for Woman # 1 and Woman # 2. However, the film begins to drag with Man # 1, whose backstory is oddly more complex.

If you enjoy a film that is a little different, experimental, or just like watching beautiful imagery, you might enjoy letting this film wash over you.

Beauty needs no words

[sno-smari-m · 9/10 · 10 November 2010]

At first glance, it might appear somewhat ironic that LIMITE remains the one work with which most people identify multi-talented Mario Peixoto today. While Peixoto kept writing poetry, essays and various manuscripts throughout his life, this film remained his one contribution in the cinematic world. After its initial release in 1931, the film was virtually unavailable for decades, making it hard for the general public and historians alike to judge for themselves if this so-called "masterpiece" which Peixoto had produced in his youth really was worthy of so much acclaim. However, recently I had the opportunity of seeing LIMITE on a big screen with live musical arrangement, and I am forced to admit that the film's current status as a phenomenon has rather little to do with its unavailability; it remains genuinely impressive, starkingly beautiful to this day.

The story finds several mentally defeated persons recalling their past in a boat. Peixoto takes use of several flash-backs which might appear confusing, especially since there are only some very few title cards present throughout this silent film. However, exactly what the story is about is less relevant (and interesting) than how it is being visually executed, and furthermore the emotional impact it leaves upon us. Through his extensive use of close-ups, landscapes, storms and shadows, Peixoto manipulates us into imagining his visions as being truly real, physical presences. For instance, when showing us a group of people enjoying a Charlie Chaplin-short at a theater, his way of visually describing the term laughter becomes so convincing that we nearly forget that we, in fact, are observing another group of observers; they become part of us, and we flow within one another into one eternity.

Peixoto covers laughter, and he covers death, nature, despair and small-town life. You find yourself sitting at the edge of your seat not because you're wondering what's going to happen next, but due to what you're observing each moment. Even though it is evident that Peixoto was heavily inspired by earlier experimental film directors (the masters of German expressionism come to mind), one of the major reasons why it leaves such a profound impact is precisely because it was made at such a late point in the silent era; too late to make an impact on the silent medium, it is almost disturbing how bluntly it reveals exactly what was lost when silent films died. For a long time, the focus on dialogue in talking films made directors blind, forcing the film medium to take one huge step backwards in terms of aesthetics. Of course, things have changed to the better since that time, but LIMITE still remains a thought-provoking reminder as to not forget that film, after all, first and foremost is a visual medium, where beauty should play a central part.

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

[boblipton · 6/10 · 16 January 2023]

A man and two women are in a boat drifting on the ocean. As the film progresses, we see events from their pasts.

You may, if you like, view this movie as a reflection on memory and how it affects the present. With its Academician-influenced editing and its Surrealistic visuals -- lots of Dutch angles, many shots of body parts, especially feet --clearly writer-director Mario Peixote intended to create a work of high art in the latest style, part of the movement that seemed on the point of engulfing Europe. Alas, it did not work, commercially at any rate. After a brief premiere, it went into the vault, taken out occasionally for festivals. Its reputation began to grow, aided by an article Peixote translated into Portuguese in which Eisenstein praised it; Peixote later admitted that he had written the article in Portuguese and invented its provenance.

The one copy of the movie began to degrade, and what is available now is not what it was in 1931; sections are missing, and others show degradation. In 1988, a Brazilian film magazine named it the country's best movie of all time. I suppose some movie had to come at the top of a poll, but I found it too slow and demanding for what is supposed to be a popular medium. Still, even for a Philistine such as me, it has its charms.

Cinematic sleep aid

[sccollier · 3/10 · 14 December 2020]

Run the movie again, please. I'm not quite sure yet if the paint is completely dry.

A beautiful if imperfect experiment

[I_Ailurophile · 8/10 · 14 November 2022]

There is nothing ordinary about this movie. Even its continued existence seems to be a fascinating bit of cinematic and cultural history, reflected in portions of the footage that were considerably degraded prior to digital preservation. Between filmmaker Mário Peixoto's pointedly unconventional selection and arrangement of shots, his editing, and Edgar Brasil's cinematography, in part I'm reminded of Dziga Vertov's 'Man with a movie camera,' save for that 'Limite' boasts discrete storytelling versus pure technique. That storytelling is conducted piecemeal and effectively through imagery alone, as any text in this silent picture is sparing (and perhaps also dependent on where and how you watch) and arguably inessential to the film itself. Rounded out simply with lush orchestral music, at the outset the feature seems decidedly uncomplicated, and for those who have difficulty with the silent era maybe altogether lacking. Even for those accustomed to older titles, and more unorthodox ones, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that 'Limite' is a little challenging. For those who can best appreciate it, however, this is rich and engrossing, with little ready comparison.

Should one view this strictly as a somewhat abstruse exercise in experimental film-making, still it would be worthy on that basis alone. 'Man with a movie camera' might actually be a fair point of reference after all, as no small part of the shot composition in 'Limite' is comprised of portraits in miniature of people, structures, landscapes, or objects that are in and of themselves wonderfully curious and curiously wonderful. Between this and close-ups, oblique angles, a sometimes freely moving camera, and other atypical qualities of direction and photography, the fundamental visual experience of the feature is joyously flavorful, and maybe its core value. Granted, this may understandably not be enough for some viewers, yet the certainty of the excellence in this regard is then also abutted against a sense of narrative that is more loose and less concrete. To be sure, there is plot herein, yet its scenes, characters, and beats are often given less than perfect definition, such that discerning connective threads is not immediately guaranteed. Such deficit of clarity will doubtlessly further alienate some viewers, and nonetheless make the title more difficult even for those otherwise prepared to engage with it.

For my part, what I require most out of any given picture is a story, a through line, some distinct progression from A to B. This isn't to say that I can't also admire films that adopt a more avant-garde approach - but on the other hand, those projects that try to have it both ways are all but destined for more stringent assessment. Where 'Limite' focuses on its resplendent, painstaking visual construction, or where it emphatically focuses on communication of major plot, it's sharp if not also altogether brilliant. The more artistically minded it becomes in conveying its story, centered around its more plainly evident themes, the more I personally struggle with it. By all means, I think this feature is fantastic, deserving on its own merits and earning a solid recommendation for those who enjoy the less mainstream side of cinema. I just also think that a tad more explicitness in the storytelling would have broadened the movie's viewership, and opened up new channels of esteem otherwise, without actually losing any of its substance (direct or indirect) or artistic value. As if to illustrate the point: the music is great, yet just as there are times when its juxtaposition with a scene is perfect, and other instances when the specific piece selected to accompany a specific moment is ill-fitting.

Still, maybe all these words are beside the point, because the truth remains that by the nature of what 'Limite' is, its appeal will be, well, "limited" to the most ardent, open-minded, and patient of cinephiles. Again, for its shot composition, cinematography, and editing alone I believe this is worth watching, let alone the bigger ideas underlying its craft and the particular story (stories) it tells. Even at that, though, mileage will vary significantly from one viewer to the next. I'm of the mind that this is well worth seeking out and exploring, and I can see how it's held in such high regard - with the recognition that not everyone will have the same experience.

Aimlessly

[XxEthanHuntxX · 7/10 · 9 November 2021]

Extremely creative film way before its time. With a very unique narrative, coming out of the earlier days of cinema. Influenced by poetic literature from an ingenious director. Sparkling with imaginary and poetism in its very silent visual but story rich imagery. Hard to rate this title, with the first half being a great deal lesser interesting than the latter. But with a striking originality so early in the industry. I would, if I could, rate "Limite" ~ 7.7.

Boring

[mrdonleone · 3/10 · 1 June 2020]

What a crappy movie really. Did I really waste my time watching this nonsense for let's say two hours??! Nice images, it's not that, but so incredibly slow... Great to see where Orson Welles got his inspiration for certain scene transitions though..

Limit

[spoilsbury_toast_girl · 13 April 2008]

'Limite' is a great, poetic, inspiring mystery ride. I dare to say that it is the visually best film I've seen from that era. The slow, unique pace and the repeating structure of its main musical motif, Erik Satie's theme 'Gymnopédie', intensify the suggestive effect of the immensely beautifully captured images in a magnificent montage and unfolds one of the great philosophical questions of the 20th century: the unsolvable contradiction between transience of human life and the eternity of the universe. The story is hard to access, because Peixoto almost always works with flashbacks and rare title links, so we have to solve the puzzle for our own. Nevertheless, it's the imagery that is so fascinating, full of suicidal feelings, desperateness, tristesse and wonderfully compositions of nature - trees, foggy landscapes, waves. An unparalleled cinematic experience I will not forget and of course highly recommended.

Simply one of the greatest movies of all time

[gustavo_ds_moraes · 9/10 · 14 April 2015]

Watch "Limite" was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. In the first time I watched, I was quite confused about the film claim, which left me in doubt about whether I liked the movie or not. But, in the second time I saw, I could see why "Limite" is one of the most acclaimed films of Brazilian cinema by the critics. With a very unusual story and a very experimental direction, "Limite" transports us into a universe with images of rare beauty, thanks to the direction of Mario Peixoto, which capture, with your camera, very bold and meticulous frames. Due to its experimental aspect, it can be said that "Limite" is one of the most avant-garde films of his time, and even to the present time it sounds like a very advanced film. It's a pity that a film with such quality as "Limite" is so despised by the public, it deserves much more recognition and publicity than it has.

Important film in he history of Brazilian cinema, but not moving

[guisreis · 6/10 · 4 May 2022]

A major old classic of Brazilian cinema, considered as the very best ever by Brazilian Film Critics Association (Abraccine), this is a kind of expressionist silent movie, very experimental and non-linear, with almost no dialogue (I think that the very few original intertitles were those i the cemetery, spoken by Mário Peixoto's character imself). Three characters appear together and very bleak in a small boat, or separetly in their lives before that moment. We know by the newspaper one of the women, a seamstress, reads that the other was a convict and escaped with the help of the keeper. Additionally, we see the man in a graveyard and see a sign of who was his loss. While there are some nice innovative frames and some quite good transitions and overlaps, pace is too sluggish in my opinion, considerably boring. It is not an easy film to follow, including due its symbolic nature. Sometimes frenzy camera moves do not work either, despite cinematography being a positive trait most of the time.

Masterpiece

[gbill-74877 · 9/10 · 25 January 2023]

A beautiful poem of a film, made by a 22-year-old (Mário Peixoto) who astoundingly would never complete another in his life. There are clearly cinematic influences to be found here but his is a highly original work, communicating the melancholy nature of existence, and doing so incredibly artistically. Seriously, make sure to engage the right side of your brain while letting this film wash over you. Not bound to form or convention of what to put on the screen, or how to tell a story for that matter, Peixoto experimented, and there is a joy to these images despite the somber story. It's all accompanied by a haunting, beautiful classical score.

Early on we see a wonderful dissolve from a closeup of a pair of eyes into a glittering dance of sunlight sparkling on the sea, and then find three people in a small boat. Eventually we'll learn their backstories, told in a poetic way, where the viewer has to piece things together. Quite a bit of time is spent on imagery, some of which is reflective of the film's larger themes, and some of which seems in there simply because the young director and cinematographer Edgar Brasil found what they were looking at cool, all of which leads to the disdain of some viewers that "nothing happens," or that it's unclear what's happening. I have to say, I was mesmerized for all 120 minutes.

We see rural images of Brazil in a time gone by, and trees and other flora feature prominently. Fields of grass blow rhythmically in the wind, we see the paths trees have taken while branching, how they look reflected in the water, and how bent and gnarled they can become. Over the course of the movie, in looking at the beautiful and sometimes odd shapes of nature, I began wondering whether these were parallel to people's lives, and the branches they take. Water is also a motif, starting with the sea rippling gently against the boat, and in one mesmerizing tight shot, bobbing up and down as if dancing, while the horizontal side of the boat remains fixed. The tide will wash away a pair of lover's footprints, and waves will bash against each other in an orgiastic froth. There is something timeless and eternal about the sea that is in stark contrast to the people on this boat, lost in thought about their little lives.

Peixoto also delighted in the imagery of objects, like in extreme closeups of a spool of thread, a button, or a measuring tape, or in the train's axle churning along, shot from the perspective right behind it. Fisherman's nets hang gracefully after they've paddled out into the water, an art piece of their own. At one point he wobbles the camera around and turns it upside down, possibly reflecting the disoriented mood of the woman who has left her husband, but coming across also as just a kid with a new toy, a movie camera, and trying to make a neat effect. There is such a feeling of artistic freedom here.

Piecing together the plot almost seems pedantic in light of the film's lyrical beauty, but it does serve to anchor what's on the screen and can be rather elusive, so here is my take. One of the women (Olga Breno) has escaped prison, briefly taking up work in a textile factory, but then upon reading how police are pursuing her, is on the run again. The other woman on the boat (Tatiana Rey) had made her way home from shopping to find her husband (Brutus Pedreira) asleep at the top of the stairs, probably after a late night out, and at that moment, ruing her marriage, leaves him. As she wonders which way to turn while sitting atop a rock, looking down at the water, she thinks back on his drinking and his indulgences in light of their financial struggles; we see how worn his shoes are. We then see that the husband is a piano player at the silent movie house, and we get a nice little sequence of him accompanying the Charlie Chaplin film The Adventurer (1917). It's notable that this is the only time where we see happiness in the film, when filmgoers have escaped into the joy of cinema, though the pianist is unhappy as he does his job.

The man in the boat (Raul Schnoor) is seen in flashback walking along the beach with a woman, hand in hand, as well as swimming with her in what should be happy moments, but we soon see them standing together in a field, each lost in thought. Later we see the waves wash over their footprints, the ultimate fate of all of our happiness, and all of our lives. We see him kissing her hand at the door, and there is quite a contrast between his clean-shaven, well-dressed appearance in flashback and the wild look he has on the boat in the present. After she sends him away, we're treated to a stunning scene in high contrast of him walking through a country gate, directly into the camera.

Eventually he reaches a cemetery, and meets another man sitting at a grave, playing with his wedding band (Mário Peixoto himself). The backstory here is a little more involved, thus necessitating the only dialogue via intertitles in the entire film. "You come from the house of a woman who is not yours," the man at the grave chides him, then after pointing downward at the grave, "Supposing she were mine, like this one was yours... what if I told you she had leprosy?" He has been confronted by the husband of the woman he was just walking along the beach with, the one he kissed on the hand. His own wife has died, and he is carrying on an affair with this man's woman, who apparently has leprosy. The cuckolded husband leaves and he pursues him, but never catches up. He walks out onto a dock and is propositioned by a prostitute (Carmen Santos), a sequence which includes a marvelous medium shot down the pier of her standing in front of him, but he leaves.

So all of these characters are trying to escape in this little boat. One is trying to escape the physical confinement of prison, another the claustrophobia of a bad marriage, and the last, the pain of having lost his wife and then his lover. And just as Chaplin botches his escape in the film we saw earlier, a moment of foreshadowing, these three are all doomed. There is no more fresh water on the boat, it's drifting, and they are at odds with another. Eventually, it's wrecked. We can't escape our fate, we can't escape the chains of our existence, we can't escape our sadness. And while these individuals are going through their unspoken torments, everyday life continues on, and the natural beauty around them is impassive.

Mário Peixoto's Brazilian Experimental Feature sets a new benchmark in unusual surrealist drama but is terribly slow for today's viewing experience.

[SAMTHEBESTEST · 7/10 · 13 September 2021]

Limite / Limit (1931) : Brief Review -

Mário Peixoto's Brazilian Experimental Feature sets a new benchmark in unusual surrealist drama but is terribly slow for today's viewing experience. When i first learnt about Limite from many critic's lists, i was unsure about the genre and capability of holding my interest but was sure that there'd be something new and experimental. It is a silent feature film made in 1931, that's when Talkies had started already so maybe that is the main issue why this film looks terribly slow Today. It's not that i haven't seen such stuff before, i have even seen many silent films and experiental films made before this and having longer runtime, sometimes double or even triple. The problem might be the unusual structure of the story and how those characters are presented without much screen space. Almost 30% frames in the film are shot over the nature and its elements such as River, Waves, Trees, Sky, Wood and Surface. A man and two women are lost at sea in a rowboat. Their pasts are conveyed in flashbacks throughout the film, clearly denoted by music. One woman has escaped from prison; another has left an oppressive and unhappy marriage; the man is in love with someone else's wife. This experiment is worth watching for sure but the narrative is damn slow to keep you engaged. If you don't have any issue with the pace and you understand the basics and upper levels of Experimental Cinema, then there's nothing here that can be bashed. Mário Peixoto's experiment is cited as one of the greatest Brazilian Film of All Time and deserves to be there in the list of '1001 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die'. Even i came to know about it from the list. Overall, it's provocative enough to fetch your attention and worth two hours of your viewing but i don't think it should be considered as a Legendary Film. At least I won't be the one to do so.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

Cited As Brazil's Best Film Ever

[springfieldrental · 7/10 · 22 September 2022]

Brazilian Mario Peixoto was 22 years old when he wrote, produced and directed his two-hour film, May 1931 "Limite." It was his movie-making debut, but Peixoto's eventual classic turned out to be his last. "Limite" premiered in Rio de Janeiro and had two additional showings with mixed results. Some viewers loved it, others greeted the movie with a big yawn. The feature film wasn't able to find a distributer, and it slowly faded into obscurity.

Except for Orson Welles. While in Brazil in 1942 producing a good-will film for the United States government encouraging South America to side with the Allies during World War Two, the director saw "Limite" and loved it. France's Renee Jeanne Falconetti, star of Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 classic "The Passion of Joan of Arc," relocated to Brazil during the war, saw Peixoto's movie and was equally laudative about his film. The avant garde movie about two women and one man caught in the middle of the ocean on a lifeboat with no hope of being saved has been voted as the greatest movie ever produced in Brazilian cinema. The Brazilian Film Critics Association, whose country has a rich history of releasing some of cinema's finest movies, in 2015 announced "Limite" as the top pick polled by its members.

Peixoto came from a wealthy Brazilian family, and was given the best education money could buy in both his native country and in England. On his return to Brazil, he joined a theater group, where members formed the Chaplin Club in 1928. Peixoto, whose interest reverted to cinema, returned to Europe to study film production. He was inspired to make "Limite" when he happened to see a cover of VU magazine in a Paris newsstand showing a woman's face with a man's hands handcuffed together, and proceeded to write the film's outline. Back in Brazil, he hired cameraman (Edgar Brazil) and a group of actors to be in his self-financed movie. "Limite" relies on flashbacks on the three primary people, one an escapee from prison, and the other two, an unhappy couple caught in an oppressive marriage.

"Limite" was lost to obscurity well after Welles drew notice of the film. One single nitrate print was found in 1959, and for the next 20 years the film, partially decomposed, was restored frame by frame. Once it was shown in its restored form, the intelligentsia heaped praise on the movie, stating Peixoto was able to explain the human condition like no one else. Saulo Pereira del Mello, who spent years restoring the film, said, "Limite is a cosmic tragedy, a cry of anguish, a piercing meditation on human limitations, a painful and icy acknowledgment of human defeat. It is a tragic film, a glacial tragedy."

After making "Limite," Peixoto continuously made efforts to produce additional films, but he encountered roadblocks on every project he started. He turned to writing, scratching out a living after selling his parents' properties, and died in February 1992. But his legacy lives on, not only as the creator of the greatest Brazilian film ever made, but in his inclusion in the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" reference book.

It was a joke??

[fivelocks · 2/10 · 23 February 2019]

Imagine that, in 1931, a film student won a camera from his father, joined friends and went out to film. Some good framing but nothing more. Several silent films are among my all-time favorites but this movie is simply ... amateur. If this is the best Brazilian film of all time then, definitively, I do not waste my time with any other.

Memory, tumultuous ways

[chaos-rampant · 29 September 2015]

Another comment here gives some precious background around the film which frees us here to examine the cinematic, the work of moving illusion.

We cut at the heart of cinema when we say that memory is one of the central facets of what gives rise to reality, that faculty we have with the capacity to recall and project illusion, a cinematic subject. We have three characters stranded on a boat here, each reminiscing in turn about currents of life that brought them there.

The whole is what they were fond of calling a "cinematic poem" in those days, which means this. Memory as a way of shuffling narrative, creating currents of image so that it's not anchored on a stage, nor pivots around clearly revealed drama, but wanders off and about, free to gather up disparate views from the whole mundane horizon.

People walking places, empty windows, a flower by the side of the road, an affair, a Chaplin movie, tall grasses, these and others are all picked up to be scattered about again by the camera. It's already where Jonas Mekas would arrive a long time later.

Those were wonderful times but so different - horizons that were open then are now closed and vice versa. So when a scene of inner turmoil is transmuted as the camera wildly swinging around at the hands of the operator, you get the painterly sense desired, how the known geography in front of the eye can be made to spill like a painter mixes colors. It's French inspired in this sense, the works of Epstein and others.

We have come up with more eloquent ways since, which comes down to a single thing. The silent makers worth knowing all dismantled perception, freeing eye from world. That was enough at that stage. The question then was how to regroup these fragments in a more penetrative sense that looks behind appearances to find soul, actually do it. All the subsequent cinematic schools of note would busy themselves with ways to thread this cornucopia of images, Italians first.

This might well be what this filmmaker was doing in his way, looking for soul, and it was enough to impress Welles when he was going to be down there in Brazil a decade later. But it is also randomly scattershot for long stretches, giving simply a fragmental sense.

As a last thing to note, the wonderful experiments of the silent era would soon draw to an end, this comes on the tail end. Sound rolled in, solidifying reality back to a fixed state, removing the sense of reverie ingrained in silence. You'll see near the end here a wonderful sequence of symphonic water - film could still be thought of as music, whereas not after.