Final Rating: 4/5
Manoel de Oliveira is the most crucial filmmaker in Portuguese film history. Cinephiles around the world know his name for the impressive longevity of his career. It began in the 1930s with short films and ended with his death in 2015, when Manoel would still shoot features up until the year he passed away.
In the last two decades of his work, the author would shoot a film each year, impressing audiences with his capacity to develop and shoot his projects quickly. Hence, it is complex to understand Oliveira’s career, which gifts us with a plenitude of efforts that reflect their time, both cinematically and politically. The director’s body of work spans the pre-World War II period, the Cold War, the Portuguese dictatorship, and the return to democracy. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Manoel shot his films parallel to the European Union’s inception and the 2008 economic turmoil.
In this sense, preserving a rich catalog of a filmmaker such as the Portuguese master, which spans eight decades of production, is an obligation to conserve film’s history. The Portuguese Cinematheque, through its Museum of Cinema, restored his first feature, Aniki-Bóbó.
Released in 1942, Manoel was a veteran in the country’s industry; he began shooting films in 1931 with his short Douro, Faina Fluvial (Labor on the Douro River). Consequently, he continued to film short films in the 1930s, including: White Coal, Lisbon Statues, Os Últimos Temporais – Cheias do Tejo, Já se Fabricam Automóveis em Portugal, Miramar, Praia das Rosas, and Famalicão. The director’s filmography would consist of documentaries about the Portuguese waters, both beaches and rivers, as well as the cultural elements, such as Lisbon architecture.
In 1942, he introduced himself to fiction filmmaking, delivering a work that some, including the quintessential critic André Bazin, would argue influenced Italian neo-realism.
Aniki-Bóbó narrates the daily lives of Portuguese children in the city of Porto, one of the principal cities. In a straightforward story, we follow the romantic triangle between three school kids: Carlitos, Eduardo, and Teresinha. The two boys fight for the girl’s love, doing the possible and the impossible to charm her. The director draws a linear narrative about the infancy, observing how the children grew up in Portuguese society in the 1940s.
In the overall context, World War II was at its height, three years before its end; however, Portugal assumed a neutral stance on the conflict, resulting in the slight impact on the Iberian country, while neighboring countries, such as France, faced Germany’s siege. Yet, Aniki-Bóbó has a naive irony when observing Europe’s situation at the time, and even the film production, which focused on nationalist works to empower the masses.
Hence, the first feature of the master is a deviation in his filmography; he would shoot three-hour epics near the end of his life, as well as other European film productions of that time. However, Oliveira delivers a formal scheme that authors like De Sica and Rossellini would perpetuate within Italian neo-realism; stories surrounding the city featured a simplistic screenplay that focuses profoundly on the emotional impact. In a sense, Aniki-Bóbó is more reminiscent of an early Tati, such as Jour de Fête, than the Italian crew.
Manoel de Oliveira’s film has an appreciation for the city of Porto, which he demonstrates through the children benefiting from its rivers and streets, where they play the game from the title. Porto is as essential to that story as the central trio. Yet, the most impressive element of the film is the authenticity of its craft, investing in frames that elevate the city and position the children as a small portion of it, but essential to the city’s life.
Aniki-Bóbó is a phenomenon that requires context when analyzing Manoel de Oliveira’s rich filmography. Despite the comparisons to other trailblazers from that decade, the Portuguese director impresses with a heartfelt and simple film. It unites the elements from his prior short-film works and paves the grandiose future in his career.
Aniki-Bóbó was seen during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Thank you to the festival for the screener.
