Amazon: Longest River in the World
About Amazon: Longest River in the World
Silvino Santos's documentary follows the Amazon through Amazonas, Pará, Iquitos, and the Putumayo. Close shots take in caimans, jaguars, turtles, birds, and butterflies, then rubber tapping, manatee hunting, fishing, Brazil nuts, sugarcane, cocoa, cotton, cattle, and timber. Indigenous sequences include Parintintin customs, cassava, gourd work, and hammocks, and Witoto footage with a title about young men taking up trousers.
Cast & crew
More about Amazon: Longest River in the World
Santos shot it in 1917 and 1918 and finished it in June 1920. Money came from the government of the state of Amazonas, the merchant Manoel Gonçalves, the entrepreneur Avelino Cardoso, and businessmen in Manaus. London saw it on February 12, 1922, under the title The Wonders of the Amazon. It then played in Britain, France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Spain.
Themes
Background
Santos filmed during the last years of the Amazon rubber trade, and the picture spends much of its length on latex, nuts, timber, and the other export work along the river.
In film history
For decades Brazilian historians had only stills and later Santos films, especially No Paiz das Amazonas, to stand in for this one. The 2023 identification put the 1918–1920 footage back into circulation.
Making
The 2023 presentations used Portuguese title cards in place of the foreign ones on the surviving copy. Luís Henrique Xavier wrote a score for those showings.
Reviews
Le Monde wrote of the film's 'immense artistic value.' The Guardian called it the 'Holy Grail of Brazilian silent cinema.'
Look
Santos photographed the river journey himself, cutting animal close-ups against longer passages of extractive work and Indigenous life.
Music
Silent on release. Luís Henrique Xavier composed music for the 2023 screenings.
Preservation
Presumed lost in 1931. In 2023 the Czech Film Archive turned up a 1981 digital copy of a nitrate print that has since been lost. The copy had been filed as The Wonders of the Amazon, an American film dated 1925. Jay Weissberg, Sávio Luís Stoco, and the Cinemateca Brasileira identified it as Santos's film.
Notes
- The Portuguese title is Amazonas, o Maior Rio do Mundo.
- It was treated as lost from 1931. In February 2023 the Czech Film Archive sent Jay Weissberg, director of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, a digital copy made in 1981 from a nitrate print that has since disappeared.
- The Prague copy was catalogued as The Wonders of the Amazon, an American film of 1925.
- Sávio Luís Stoco, of the Federal University of Pará, identified it. The Cinemateca Brasileira confirmed the identification.
- Stoco said, 'It's basically a miracle. We didn't have the slightest hope that this work would one day be found.'
- Pordenone showed it on October 10, 2023. The Cinemateca Brasileira screened it in São Paulo that November, and the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus showed it on December 29, 2023.
Scenes
- Close views of caimans and jaguars cut against the forest.
- Workers tap latex and process Brazil nuts.
- Witoto footage, with a title about trousers among the young men.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Amazonas o maior rio do mundo.webm)