Manoel de Oliveira (Contemporary Film Directors)

Understanding the iconoclastic work of a lifelong cinematic pioneer

Manoel de Oliveira's eighty-five year career made him a filmmaking icon and a cultural giant in his native Portugal. A lifelong cinematic pioneer, Oliveira merged distinctive formal techniques with philosophical treatments of universal themes--frustrated love, aging, nationhood, evil, and divine grace--in films that always moved against mainstream currents.

Randal Johnson navigates Oliveira's massive feature film oeuvre. Locating the director's work within the broader context of Portuguese and European cinema, Johnson discusses historical and political influences on Oliveira's work, particularly Portugal's transformation from dictatorship to social democracy. He ranges from Oliveira's early concerns with cinematic specificity to hybrid discourses that suggest a tenuous line between film and theater on the one hand, and between fiction and documentary on the other.

A rare English-language portrait of the director, Manoel de Oliveira invites students and scholars alike to explore the work of one of the cinema's greatest and most prolific artists.

Randal Johnson is professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Cinema Novo x 5: Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Film and other books.