Carnaval no Fogo

1949 ComedyCrime 97 minutes Directed by Watson Macedo

About Carnaval no Fogo

International thieves check into a luxury hotel in Rio during carnival, planning to rob the tourists. Their chief, Anjo, is supposed to be known by a cigarette case marked with an angel. The case falls into the hands of Ricardo, who is staging the hotel's carnival show with Marina. The janitor Serafim, waiting on an American brother who thinks he is a performer, and the rest of the clumsy staff are pulled into the mix-up.

Cast & crew

More about Carnaval no Fogo

Watson Macedo directed. Anselmo Duarte is credited with the script and also plays Ricardo, the show director. The picture runs 97 minutes and was released in 1949. The hotel mix-up is played inside a carnival revue, which is where the musical numbers sit.

Themes

  • a password that lands on the wrong man
  • carnival as cover for a robbery
  • hotel staff who will not stay out of it
  • Copacabana
  • cigarette case
  • Anjo
  • carnival revue
  • Serafim
  • mistaken identity
  • chanchada

Background

Atlântida's carnival comedies of the late 1940s put radio singers and a revue plot in the same hotel, and sold the result as a Rio holiday picture.

Making

The comedy is a chanchada: a crime plot used as the excuse for carnival numbers at the Copacabana Palace, with Oscarito and Grande Otelo as the working pair in the hotel.

Reviews

A Manhã's Long-Shot scored it three out of five. Antônio Moniz Vianna, in Correio da Manhã, wrote that it was the most idiotic thing national cinema had produced.

Notes

  • Oscarito plays Serafim. José Lewgoy plays Anjo. Eliana Macedo plays Marina. Grande Otelo is in the hotel staff.
  • Jece Valadão, Wilson Grey, and José Lewgoy made their Brazilian film debuts in it.
  • During the shoot, Grande Otelo's wife shot their six-year-old son and then killed herself. He did not watch the finished film until thirty years later.
  • Long-Shot, in the paper A Manhã, gave it three points out of five and called it entertainment for people who like the genre.
  • Antônio Moniz Vianna, in Correio da Manhã, called it the most idiotic thing Brazilian cinema had produced.

Scenes

  • Ricardo picks up the angel cigarette case in the hotel and is taken for the chief of the gang.
  • Serafim tries to get into the carnival show because a brother he has never met thinks he is an artist.