José Leitão de Barros

Biography

His first films, “Malmequer” and “Mal de Espanha”, date from 1918. They were made by a man who by day taught drawing and mathematics at a school.

José Júlio Marques Leitão de Barros was born on 22 October 1896 in Lisbon, the son of a naval officer. He studied at the faculties of science and letters of the University of Lisbon, graduated from the Escola Normal Superior (the higher teacher-training school), and then took a course in architecture at the School of Fine Arts. He taught drawing and mathematics at a secondary school. He painted watercolours and pictures and exhibited them in Portuguese museums, in Spain, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, and in Brazil. In 1923 he married Helena Roque Gameiro, an artist and the daughter of the watercolourist Alfredo Roque Gameiro. Journalism ran alongside all this. He edited the illustrated magazine Notícias Ilustrado (1928–1935), founded O Domingo Ilustrado (1925–1927) and Século Ilustrado, and wrote for the newspapers O Século and A Capital and for the magazine Contemporânea. His chronicles from Diário de Notícias were published as a book, “Os Corvos” (“The Ravens”). His plays were staged at the National Theatre in Lisbon and in other venues, and as a stage designer he created the sets for many productions. He also wrote “Elementos de História de Arte” (“Elements of Art History”).

He came to cinema through experiments with form. Two strands are visible in his early films: historical evocation and anecdotal chronicle. From Rino Lupo he took the idea of the “pictorial film”, he knew the ideas of Louis Feuillade, and later some formal devices of Soviet cinema, as theorised by Sergei Eisenstein.

The documentary “Nazaré” (1927) showed the fishing village with a rough plastic beauty, and in “Lisboa, Crónica Anedótica” (1930) well-known actors played alongside passers-by from the street. In the same year he shot “Maria do Mar” in Nazaré. It is usually placed directly after Robert Flaherty’s “Moana”, and in Portugal it is called the country’s first film combining documentary footage and fiction. I think his later fame is hard to explain without this film: all his subsequent fishing stories grew out of it.

“A Severa” (1931), the story of the first famous fado singer, based on a play by Júlio Dantas, was the first Portuguese sound film. It was partly shot in Paris, and René Clair, by some accounts, had a hand in the script. He was also the main driving force behind the building of the Tobis Portuguesa studios, completed in 1933.

Next came “As Pupilas do Senhor Reitor” (1935), from a novel by Júlio Dinis, “Bocage” (1936), and the comedy “Varanda dos Rouxinóis” (1939) about a cyclist in the Volta a Portugal. “Ala-Arriba!” (1942) showed the fishermen of Póvoa de Varzim with unusual dramatic force, and the Venice Biennale gave it one of its prizes. He made “Inês de Castro” (1944) and a film about Camões (1946), which was shown at the first Cannes festival, and in 1949 “Vendaval Maravilhoso”, about the Brazilian poet Castro Alves. After 1949 he worked mainly on documentaries, the last of them, about the Salazar Bridge over the Tagus, appearing in 1966.

From 1934 he organised historical processions and popular marches for Lisbon’s city festivals, served as secretary-general of the Exhibition of the Portuguese World, was responsible for Lisbon’s Feira Popular (1943) and headed the National Society of Fine Arts. In 1935 he was made a Commander of the Order of Saint James of the Sword, and in 1941 a Grand Officer of the Order of Christ. He also made films for institutions of the Estado Novo regime: “Legião Portuguesa” and “Mocidade Portuguesa”; from the 1960s he was regarded as one of the authorities’ favourite directors. After the revolution of 1974 he was judged chiefly by these works, and later critics reassessed his films.

José Leitão de Barros died on 29 June 1967 in Lisbon, in the São Mamede district, and was buried in the Prazeres cemetery.