Pixote the Pee Wee Bigshot



Juan Sanz
Identities In Latin American Cinema
Professor William Garcia
Film Paper

Pixote The Pee Wee Bigshot

Pixote is a 1981 film narration directed by Hector Babenco that offered insight into the harsh socioeconomic conditions endured by Brazilian youth in Sao Paolo. Through Pixote’s raw character, the audience watches his innocence being forced into savagery and uncaring, intoa man who does not fully comprehend the world around him. Overall the movies success can be attributed to its broad range of themes and the authenticity of the youngster street actors. Babenco’s underlying message could be interpreted as the unresponsiveness of social institutions, but really the main message is that because of sympathy and irresponsibility, social institutions fail atpersecuting the young for the actions they commit. The theme is nationally embodied in the main character, Fernando Ramos da Silva, as he is struck dead in 1987 by police forces.

In his narration, Babenco uses the Italian Neorealism style to illustrate how Brazilian youths are, in essence, hopeless from the beginning. The movie is co-written by Jorge Duran and produced by Paulo Francini and Jose Pinto.The movie was also partly based the book by Jose Louzeiro, Infancia dos Mortos, which translated means Childhood of the Dead. It is considered the third most commercially acclaimed Brazilian film at that time. Compared to “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands” and “Bye Bye Brazil”, the Pixote film stands as one of the most brutal in-your-face depictions of Brazil’s youth problems. The movie hasreceived six awards, including the Silver Leopard in the Locarno International Film Festival, the National Society of Film Critics Award, and one Golden Globe nomination, between 1981 and 1982. It took sixteen weeks to shoot the film and it cost twice as much as predicted in the budget.

Pixote is a ten-year-old boy subject to Sao Paolo Brazil’s harshest circumstances. From death all the way to drugsand sex, Babenco’s raw interpretation graphically depicts a nightmare that is in actuality, a reality. There is no true plot in the story, rather Babenco follows in the footsteps of filmmaker genius Luis Bunel and his interpretation of troubled youth in Los Olvidados, translated The Forgotten Ones. In comparison Babenco also furthers his Italian Neorealism method. Not only does he use real streetchildren as actors, he also tries to mold his story to how the child actors envisioned their lives. Babenco states that approximately forty percent of the script was rewritten. The child actors added graphic content and an element of spontaneity to the movie.

In the beginning scenes of the movie we are given some outside information about Brazil’s Sao Paolo. From Babenco’s narration we learnthat three million people in the area are homeless and without family. About twenty eight million children have standards of living lower than those predetermined by the UN Children’s Rights Declaration. Crime and delinquency run rampant, and he makes it apparent that child crime is quite frequent because children know that they will not be held responsible due to the protectorate laws of minors.This immunity is both a pass due to sympathy of the general public and a curse because it makes children more prone to criminal activity. Add Babenco’s depictions of irresponsible social institutions such as the police, homeless youth camps, and one has the setting for the first half of the movie. It is in this first half of the film that the audience witnesses poverty, abandonment, death,violence, abuse, gangsters, corruption, and rape amongst other evils.

The issued plot is placed beginning with a police roundup of street kids after the murder of a judge. They are taken to a reform center, which is just as bad, if not worse than the streets. To the public media it appears the children have a healthy lifestyle; they shower, eat, sleep in bunks, go to classes, have recreation, and...