Film Info
Gebo et l’ombre

Film Information

Exhibition Title	Gebo et l’ombre
English Title	Gebo and the Shadow
Director	Manoel de Oliveira
Countrys
Year	2012
Format	DCP
Colour	Color
Duration	91'

Cast:

Michael Lonsdale, Claudia Cardinale, Ricardo Trepa, Leonor Silveira, Luis Miguel Cintra

Credits:

G: Manoel de Oliveira
F: Renato Berta
E: Valérie Loiseleux
DA: Christian Marti
S: Henri Maikoff
P: Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Luis Urbano
CP: Mact Productions, O Som e a Furia

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Synopsis

Oliveira turns the play of the same title written by Raul Brandão (1867-1930) into a chamber opera in which music has been dissociated from the text, and the action takes place almost entirely on a single scenario: the dining room in a humble house where Gebo (Michael Lonsdale) lives with his wife (Claudia Cardinale), his son (Ricardo Trêpa), and his daughter-in-law (Leonor Silveira), and welcomes his neighbors (Luis Miguel Cintra and Jeanne Moreau). Oliveira saves the music for the interludes and focuses all Brandão’s dialogues in long scenes that boost its frontal stage presence. It looks like a return to the origins, to Amor de perdição or Le soulier de satin (the reencounter with Cintra and Silveira is quite a symptom), the nth demonstration that Oliveira has always felt more comfortable with literary adaptations than original scripts. In any case, the surprising thing about Gebo et l’ombre is its contemporary spirit, its devastating portrait of Europe’s current social and economic situation, and the extraordinary lucidity of a very political Oliveira: “we’re condemned to misery”. JP