João Ratão (106′)
Directed by Jorge Brum do Canto
1940

Based upon the homonymic operetta written in a partnership between Ernesto Rodrigues, Félix Bermudes and João Bastos, in which Estêvão Amarante had achieved outstanding success in the Avenida Theatre in 1920, Jorge Brum do Canto filmed this cinematographic version in 1940 with Óscar de Lemos in the lead role. A Portuguese soldier, João Ratão, returns from the battlefront of Flanders and reencounters Vitória, his fiancée that he had left behind in the village and continued to court by letter. He attempts to impress his friends with stories of heroic feats and amorous conquests during his military service but himself falls victim to an intrigue with the sudden appearance of the “French” Mariette, who claims to be his war bride. The music by António Melo and Jaime Silva Filho involves a narrative in fado, fox trot and folk [with the Collaboration of Cinemateca Portuguesa].

In four sessions, the Images of the Great War cinema cycle revisits a painful memory: the beginning of conflict in the African colonies, the departure of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps for Flanders, the first filmed reports capturing the reality for the thousands of Portuguese youth mobilised for battle and constituting a documented account of the experiences of recruitment, training, deployment to the front, the tragedy of life in the trenches, the traumas of confinement and return.

Maximum 2 tickets per person.

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