Hector Babenco - Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco (1981)

Published by Ice Zero | Filed under Video

Pixote: The Law of the Weakest. Pixote is the name of a chubby-cheeked 10-year-old runaway played by real-life slum kid Fernando Ramos da Silva. He’s a natural, creating a childlike and vulnerable character left emotionally hardened and morally adrift by his brutal experiences. In an overcrowded São Paulo “reform school,” a cross between a prison and an army barracks, he learns the hard facts of survival as he watches gangs prey on weaker kids, and the cops and guards abuse, beat, and even murder their charges. Pixote escapes and turns to street crime in Rio with a small gang, but his dreams of big money and a good life are dashed as they play at crime in a violent kill-or-be-killed world. Equal parts exposé and social drama, Pixote dramatizes the plight of millions of children who live on the streets or get ground up in the system that breeds hardened criminals from juvenile delinquents. Like Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados, one of Babenco’s inspirations, this occasionally melodramatic portrait of poverty is shocking and affecting, but no more so than da Silva’s own life story. After completing the film he sank back into poverty and crime, and died on the streets.






Pixote, the third feature film by the Argentine-born Brazilian director Hector Babenco, is a finely made, uncompromisingly grim movie about the street boys of Sao Paulo. Pixote looks to be about 60 years old, though he’s actually no more than 10 or 11. He may yet be growing, but one can’t be sure. Clearly Sao Paulo’s slums, backstreets, pinball parlors, whorehouses and reform schools are not providing much nourishment. He is still learning how to snatch purses, roll drunks, deal in dope and murder, but the physical part of him seems permanently fixed in withered puberty.






How much of this is a performance and how much is the manner in which Mr. Babenco uses his actor, I’ve no idea. What is apparent from the beginning of Pixote to its pathetic end, though, is that Fernando Ramos Da Silva, who plays Pixote, has one of the most eloquent faces ever seen on the screen. It’s not actually bruised, but it looks battered. The eyes don’t match, as if one eye were attending to immediate events and the other were considering escape routes. It’s a face full of life and expression and one that hardly ever smiles.

The movie that Pixote most quickly brings to mind is Luis Buñuel’s classic Los Olvidados, though Mr. Babenco doesn’t possess the dark Buñuel humor nor does he attempt to imitate Mr. Buñuel’s air of detachment, which has the effect of making credible horrors that are beyond the ken of most of us. Mr. Babenco looks at his juvenile vagrants at eye level, in closeup, as if he were one of them, making no judgments on their behavior, seeing no further into the future than they do, accepting everything that occurs and always being slightly surprised that doomed schemes are doomed to fail. This obviously is the manner of the film, not its substance, which is a mixture of outrage at social conditions and awe that within such lives traces of real humanity are still to be found.






Pixote has the conviction of a documentary, though Mr. Babenco adapted the screenplay from a novel by Jose Louzeiro. It records the unsentimental education of Pixote when, in one of the periodic police sweeps, he is packed off to a juvenile detention center where he witnesses rape, blackmail and other forms of intimidation by the other kids, and arbitrary punishment, including murder, by the bored, underpaid and sometimes sadistic attendants.

When he finally breaks out of the place, his associates are Lilica (Jorge Juliao), an effeminate boy who is always falling in love with Mr. Wrong; Dito (Gilberto Moura), a macho kid who throws Lilica over for a sick, aging Sao Paulo streetwalker, and Diego (Jose Nilson dos Santos), who is closest in age and disposition to Pixote.

Among the characters they meet on the outside are Cristal, a drugdealer with a fancy car and a fondness for young boys, who crazily commissions them to make a drug delivery in Rio de Janeiro, and Sueli (Maria Pera), the worn-out streetwalker for whom they procure and whose customers they occasionally rob. In one of the film’s more lighthearted moments (comparatively speaking), the kids hold up one of Suelki’s customers, force him into the trunk of his car, which they then drive off to a park where they celebrate by dancing, to music furnished by the car radio turned to top volume, and by becoming exceedingly drunk. No day ever has a tomorrow.

The performances are almost too good to be true, but Mr. Da Silva and Miss Pera are splendid. Pixote is not for the weak of stomach. A lot of the details are tough to take, but it is neither exploitative nor pretentious. Mr. Babenco shows us rock-bottom, and because he is an artist, he makes us believe it as well all of the possibilities that have been lost. Vincent Canby, NYT




Pixote, la ley del más débil
En las calles de São Paulo, Brasil, los niños se ven obligados a buscar cualquier medio que les permita sobrevivir. La ley prohibe que un menos de 18 años pueda ser encarcelado, situación que es aprovechada por traficantes, ladrones y otros criminales para su beneficio. De esta manera, los niños son utilizados para cometer crímenes, sin que nadie pueda evitarlo.
Pixote es uno de estos niños sin nombre, sin apellidos. Sólo Pixote (pibe, chavo, chaval). Ha vivido en las calles toda su vida y las conoce como la palma de su mano.
Como otros niños, Pixote vagabundea enmedio de prostitutas y tahures, ganándose la vida como puede. El instinto de supervivencia lo anima, a pesar de que el destino no le ofrezca ninguna esperanza, como a ninguno de los otros niños.

Pixote le permitió a Babenco experimentar con los límites cada vez más borrosos entre realidad y ficción. Planeada originalmente como un documental sobre los “niños de la calle” de São Paulo, Pixote terminó convirtiéndose en una cinta de ficción luego que las autoridades de los reformatorios juveniles de la ciudad se negaran a colaborar con el rodaje.
Babenco reclutó a varios niños vagabundos, entre ellos el extraordinario Fernando Ramos da Silva, el inolvidable “Pixote” del título, para dar vida a los personajes de este crudo drama. El resultado, aunque fruto de la imaginación, posee un vibrante espíritu realista que produce en el espectador la sensación de estar observando un documental.
El drama de Pixote trascendió las pantallas de una forma cruel e irónica. El joven Ramos da Silva se convirtió en una celebridad instantánea, pero la fama y la fortuna duraron muy poco. Años después, olvidado y empobrecido, Ramos da Silva fue muerto a tiros por un policía que lo perseguía tras haber cometido un robo, repitiendo el fatal destino de Pixote.






Pixote, la Loi du Plus Faible
Dans les rues de São Paulo errent des enfants livrés à eux-mêmes, abandonnés par leur famille. Une loi prévoyant qu’ils ne peuvent être incarcérés tant qu’ils sont mineurs fait qu’ils tombent sous la coupe de truands pour lesquels ils effectuent diverses besognes. Lorsqu’ils sont arrêtés, c’est un centre de redressement qui les attend, avant de retourner d’où ils viennent quelques mois plus tard. C’est dans cet univers sordide que vit Pixote, dix ans, entre violence, drogue et meurtre.

Pixote est un film net, radical et impitoyable. Un film coup de poing qui ouvre une porte sur l’effrayante réalité sociale du Brésil, celle de Sao Paulo et de ses gamins des rues. Pixote, c’est l’histoire d’un apprentissage. Celui d’un marmot d’une dizaine d’années incarcéré dans un centre pénitentiaire pour mineurs. Brimades, viols, chantages, rackets… Bref, la méthode assimil de la « loi du milieu ». Dedans, c’est apprendre ou subir. Dehors, c’est survivre ou mourir. Pixote a choisi de survivre grâce au trafic de drogue, grâce au trafic du sexe. Du haut de ses dix ans, Pixote est un dur de dur, une huile, un caïd haut comme trois pommes mais aussi un bambin engagé sur le chemin du sans espoir de retour. Tourné sur les lieux mêmes de l’action, Pixote peut aisément se comparer au film de Luis Buñuel, Los Olvidados dont il partage la puissance dramatique, l’efficacité de la description néo-réaliste et les vertus poétiques de certaines scènes. Pour son troisième film, Hector Babenco s’entoure d’un casting de non professionnels et passe de nombreux mois dans les banlieues de Sao Paulo à filmer une histoire rigoureusement documentaire, la plupart des jeunes interprètes ne faisant que rejouer leurs vies devant la caméra. Un procédé jusqu’auboutiste montrant une société en décomposition qui a fait de la violence un phénomène endémique. Quelques années plus tard, Fernando Ramos Da Silva, l’interprète du jeune Pixote, trouva la mort lors d’une fusillade avec la police. Il avait dix-neuf ans. La Cinémathèque de Toulouse

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