“O fantasma de um clássico”: recepção e reminiscências de Favela dos Meus Amores (H. Mauro, 1935)

Abstract

Humberto Mauro’s 1935 film Favela dos meus amores (‘The slum of my loves’), now unfortunately lost, was very well received by critics and the public and became a cultish film for Brazilian critics over the following decades. In this article through documentary fragments about the film I will articulate three main issues: 1) the role of the film in the construction of a new national identity and of a new urban popular culture with Rio de Janeiro at its centre; 2) the ideological and aesthetic aspects of the critical reception to the film; 3) the film’s role as a part of the memory of Brazilian cultural history. Through na understanding of these three issues I analyse the impact of the film in the formation of a new ‘national-popular culture in Brazil, whose ideological meaning was disputed by both the political left and right.