Sightlines · reception

How The Red Light Bandit was received

1968 · Rogério Sganzerla · The Red Light Bandit on Sightlines

The arc

Sneered at as 'udigrudi' (underground) by the Cinema Novo establishment — Glauber Rocha coined the mocking term for exactly this scene — it nonetheless swept the 1968 Brasília festival, taking Best Film and Director; today it's the founding classic of Brazil's Cinema Marginal and a fixture near the top of greatest-Brazilian-films lists.

What’s debated

The eternal split: is its channel-surfing chaos of radio voices, genres and trash aesthetics exhilarating anarchy or an exhausting mess — and did it out-Godard Godard or just imitate him?

Its footprint

Its motto — 'Quando a gente não pode fazer nada, a gente avacalha' ('When you can't do anything, you trash everything') — became the battle cry of Brazilian underground cinema, and Sganzerla's own tagline, 'a western about the Third World,' is quoted whenever the film comes up.

Where it stands

A 'you must see this' cornerstone of Brazilian cinephilia — the Cinema Marginal entry point that international Letterboxd users keep discovering via restorations and MUBI runs.

Did you know? Sganzerla was a 22-year-old former film critic when he made it, and the title bandit was real: João Acácio Pereira da Costa, the São Paulo burglar nicknamed the 'Red Light Bandit' for the red flashlight he carried on break-ins.

Named by the director

• Orson Welles — In his 1968 manifesto for the film, Sganzerla said Welles 'taught me not to separate politics from crime.'
• Jean-Luc Godard — Sganzerla credited Godard with teaching him 'to film everything for half the price.'
• Samuel Fuller — He said he took the violence of the crime picture from Fuller.
• Roberto Rossellini — He cited Rossellini as the source of the film's documentary sincerity.
• Anthony Mann — From Mann's westerns he said he took the 'brutal simplification of conflicts.'
• Buster Keaton — He named Keaton (alongside Mack Sennett) for the anarchic rhythm of silent comedy.