2025 Blind Spot Series: Limite

 

Written, co-edited, and directed by Mario Peixoto, Limite is the story of two women and a man as they are lost at sea as they reflect on their past through flashbacks. The film is an experimental silent-film drama that explores three people on a boat as they think about their past and their uncertainty in their future. Starring Olga Breno, Taciana Rey, and Raul Schnoor. Limite is an entrancing and intoxicating film by Mario Peixoto.

The film is the simple story of two women and a man stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the sea as they contemplate their present situation as well as their own respective past. It is a film that does not have much of a premise where it plays more into the visuals rather than plot schematics. Mario Peixoto does not bring in a lot of dialogue aside from a conversation between a man on the boat (Raul Schnoor) and another man he meets at a graveyard over a shared lover. The usage of flashbacks allows Peixoto to bring in depth to why these people are on this lifeboat as the first woman (Olga Breno) is a fugitive who is still on the run while the other woman (Taciana Rey) has left her alcoholic husband over their unhappy marriage. The scenes would play into the many emotional turmoil that these characters would endure as they contemplate about their isolation on this boat in the middle of the sea.

Peixoto’s direction is stylish in not just his approach to the compositions he creates but also in the overall presentation where it is shot on location at Mangaratiba which is 50 miles from Rio de Janeiro. Peixoto’s usage of close-ups and medium shots added to the drama where he would also create some camera movements and repeated shots to play into the emotional states of the characters. Even in scenes at the boat where Peixoto uses some unique high and low angles to capture the sense of uncertainty as well as wide shots such as a scene of a woman looking afar at her surroundings on a cliff as the camera would then fly off in a disorienting state. Editing the film with cinematographer Edgar Brasil, Peixoto would infuse some unique stylish cutting that would become a precursor to the jump-cut that include some rhythmic cuts that add to the sense of chaos and turmoil that the characters go through. Brasil’s black-and-white photography would add to the striking visuals of the film as well as bringing a sense of mystique to the surroundings the characters are in.

The direction also has Peixoto use music to help drive the film with help from some original score music by Brutus Pedreira as it plays into the sense of despair that the characters go through. The film’s music soundtrack features pieces by Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Alexander Borodin, and Cesar Franck add to the visuals where it has this air of poetry into the images that Peixoto creates. The film’s ensemble cast that includes Peixoto as a man that the main male protagonist meets in a graveyard, composer Brutus Pedreira as a lover one of the women, and Edgar Brasil as a man playing piano at a movie theater. Other notable small roles include Carmen Santos as a woman eating fruit that the man meets and Iolanda Bernardes as a woman on a sowing machine. The trio of Olga Breno, Taciana Rey, and Raul Schnoor are incredible in their respective roles as the two women and the man stranded on the boat as they all lament over their situation and their past.

As part of the second volume of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, the film is presented in a new 2K restoration on a print from the late 1970s in which its restoration was completed in 2010. Released both as a Region 1 DVD and a Region A Blu-Ray shared with Ermek Shinarbaev’s 1989 film Revenge. The Blu-Ray also features two special features with the first being a 2-minute introduction from Martin Scorsese about the film and its restoration with the usage of available footage including a few that have been damaged with one missing scene presented in an intertitle. The 14-minute interview with Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles as he talks about the film and what inspired Peixoto to make the film based on a photograph by Andre` Kertesz as well as the making of the film. Salles talked about its disappearance as it was a rare film to find until the 1970s as it was rediscovered by Saulo Pereira de Mello as its restoration took a long time despite the damage it endured due to poor storage conditions.

The box set featured a booklet that included an essay about the film entitled Memory in the Present by film scholar Fabio Andrade. Andrade’s essay talks about the film as well as Peixoto who saw this photograph and what inspired him to make the film as he would do it himself since other directors decided not to telling Peixoto to direct it himself. The essay also discusses its initial reception in Brazil where it was not well-received, but it was praised by other filmmakers including Orson Welles during a trip in the 1940s. The film would be lost due to the poor storage conditions in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s where it would be confiscated by the police during a tumultuous period in Brazil’s political history. It would be Saulo Pereira de Mello who would save the film in the 1970s though its single nitrate print had deteriorated where it took years for the film to be restored in the best condition possible. Thanks to Pereira de Mello’s work, the film would find new life as well as be a major foothold in Brazil’s cinematic history.

Limite is a sensational film by Mario Peixoto. While it is not a conventional film in terms of its lack of plot and a traditional narrative. It is a film that is a ravishing look of three people stranded on a lifeboat as they contemplate the past, their present, and an uncertain future. Even where it plays into ideas that would become key elements that would influence cinema in the years to come. In the end, Limite is a phenomenal film by Mario Peixoto.

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