Yes, I know.
I think it depends who has made the fandub/sub, and for which audience.
If I rip a DVD I eliminate every unnecessary dub. I would keep for SWs always Italian (for being the original), and then English or German (but the latter only for a German audience).
I tend to do this.
Have had this on my ‘to watch’ pile for a while but finally got around to it today.
As a fully paid up member of the ‘Milian Hordes’ I was always going to find some pleasure from this and its obvious similarities with the Zapatas which I am also a fan of just makes it more of a banker for me. But, having said that, it seemed a little jumpy at times and relies a little too much on its visual beauty to carry it through. It certainly has its moments and is a film I’m glad to have finally seen but it is no masterpiece and, to be honest, I was hoping for a little more from it.
Finally, without wishing to restart an old and unresolvable argument, I have to say that, for me, this is not a western at all. As I have stated elsewhere, shared themes and similarity of style are not enough to qualify a film as a western in my book and this is a perfect case in point. Zapata-like it may be but it is set in 1920s Brazil and features machine gum toting American gangsters as well as far too many cars. We all have our own slant on these things of course but this one will not be sitting amongst my western collection any more than Man, Pride and Vengeance or The Proposition do.
Well, yes, it is nothing special and it is not a western.
I wonder if they got the inspiration in Glauber Rocha films to do a European production about the Cangaçeiros, in any case they could have make it more with a Zapata feeling if they had gone back a few years in history.
Ha ha ha! You are still using that old phrase of mine, eh, amigo?
I had almost forgotten about it! 
Funny thing…
I have had this on my “to watch” pile for ages, as well, and seriously considered watching it this very day!
But, after having read your comments…I might just give it a pass until a later date.
PS= I completely agree with your assessment of MAN PRIDE AND VENGEANCE and THE PROPOSITION not being Westerns, by the way. So, I am sure I will agree that O’CANGACEIRO isn’t a Western.
I am positive that they were inspired by Rocha’s films, El Topo! No doubt about it!
[quote=“Chris_Casey, post:87, topic:223”]Ha ha ha! You are still using that old phrase of mine, eh, amigo?
I had almost forgotten about it! 
Funny thing…
I have had this on my “to watch” pile for ages, as well, and seriously considered watching it this very day!
But, after having read your comments…I might just give it a pass until a later date.
PS= I completely agree with your assessment of MAN PRIDE AND VENGEANCE and THE PROPOSITION not being Westerns, by the way. So, I am sure I will agree that O’CANGACEIRO isn’t a Western. [/quote]
Don’t be put off, Chris. It is worth a view even if you are not a fellow ‘Hordite’. (Ok, that’s not a real word.)
I had just hoped for something better. Always a mistake when going into a film.
Hmm, at least The Proposition is a western for me. 100 %
This isn’t an argument from me, Stanton. I can see why some people think it is a Western and I don’t mind that they do.
But for me, since the film takes place in Australia, not the Americas (and I include Mexico in the Americas) it isn’t a Western. Stylistically, there are Western elements in THE PROPOSITION (just as there are in MAN PRIDE AND VENGEANCE)…but, the setting stops it from being a true Western in my opinion.
To my way of thinking, O’CANGACEIRO, would come closer to being a Western (in my criteria) than THE PROPOSITION, simply due to the location of its events.
But, because it takes place in the 1920’s…it is disqualified.
Just for the record, I also do not consider NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA to be Westerns, either. However, many fans and critics do.
Has anyone else been having trouble posting to the forum, today? Just curious…
In no rush to view this one myself. Will get round to it in a couple of years I think.
[quote=“Chris_Casey, post:91, topic:223”]This isn’t an argument from me, Stanton. I can see why some people think it is a Western and I don’t mind that they do.
But for me, since the film takes place in Australia, not the Americas (and I include Mexico in the Americas) it isn’t a Western. Stylistically, there are Western elements in THE PROPOSITION (just as there are in MAN PRIDE AND VENGEANCE)…but, the setting stops it from being a true Western in my opinion.
To my way of thinking, O’CANGACEIRO, would come closer to being a Western (in my criteria) than THE PROPOSITION, simply due to the location of its events.
But, because it takes place in the 1920’s…it is disqualified.
Just for the record, I also do not consider NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA to be Westerns, either. However, many fans and critics do.
*** Has anyone else been having trouble posting to the forum, today? Just curious…***[/quote]
It depends. No country and 3 Burials are not really westerns. But when No country (or Coogan’s Bluff) is surely not a western, I think that 3 Burials can easily be considered as one.
For me Comes a Horseman, which is set immediately after WW 2, is also a 100 % western. It tells a western story, and the few things which tell us that it isn’t set after the civil war, are only of minor importance. A modern western is a western for me if the story isn’t different from one that is set in typical western times.
Another one is The Walking Hills by John Sturges. Shot in 1946 it was set in the then presence, but the story is a typical western one (and was remade as a John Wayne western with The Train Robbers) with horses in a desert.
It depends how much the modern time affects the story.
[quote=“Chris_Casey, post:91, topic:223”]This isn’t an argument from me, Stanton. I can see why some people think it is a Western and I don’t mind that they do.
But for me, since the film takes place in Australia, not the Americas (and I include Mexico in the Americas) it isn’t a Western. Stylistically, there are Western elements in THE PROPOSITION (just as there are in MAN PRIDE AND VENGEANCE)…but, the setting stops it from being a true Western in my opinion.
To my way of thinking, O’CANGACEIRO, would come closer to being a Western (in my criteria) than THE PROPOSITION, simply due to the location of its events.
But, because it takes place in the 1920’s…it is disqualified.
Just for the record, I also do not consider NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA to be Westerns, either. However, many fans and critics do.[/quote]
Agreed on all points.
There are a bunch more modern ‘westerns’ that I can’t include either for all the same reasons. Bad Day at Black Rock, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Lonely Are the Brave, Junior Bonner… the list goes on. All are films I like. None I consider westerns. Just my definition of what fits, or doesn’t fit, in the genre and I’m happy for others to have their own. It’s not an easy subject to have black and white rules on. And even someone like me with stricter than most guidelines in this field struggles with some films. Quigley Down Under for example. A western character who is sent to Australia to work. Is it a western because of Quigley or not a western because he leaves North America and travels to Australia? :-\
Of course it all depends on definition. Like some comedian once said: if you define those who survive as the fittest, than the fittest survive. In other words: theories based on definitions, tend the become some kind of conjurer’s trick: the rabbit that is miraculously juggled out of the hat, was put in it beforehand. XX can’t be an XY because in order to be an XY it must have an Y
To me O’Cangaçeiro doesn’t qualify as a western, but it does as a spaghetti western. This may sound bizarre, but that’s how I feel, if I forget all my complex definitions for a minute. The other day I watched Viva Zapata! Not really a western in my book. Why not? Set in Mexico? Not about cowboys and injuns, but Zapatistas and federales? But Villa Rides, made a decade later, qualified as a western for me. The spaghetti western pushed the western further south, not only towards the border, but across the border, to Mexico, and – apparently – all the way to Brazil. O’Cangaçeiro has all the characteristics of the Zapata western (the things Viva Zapata didn’t have!): the baroque visuals, the violence, Tomas Milian … The Proposition and Quigley Down Under, on the other hand, qualify as westerns for me, not as spaghetti westerns.
Discussed some where else before I think. Some of my favourite westerns have things in like cars and aeroplanes. But in some westerns where these kind of things are overused or depending on the style and / or tone of the film, I sometimes think to myself is this really a western I am viewing.
Right ENNIOO, in the end it’s more about feeling than about definition (and for things you love that’s usually the case)
Yes, it is about feelings. And defining is for me to give the feelings a name. Why one is and another not. But of course these definitions don’t change a film, and don’t make a film better or worse.
O’ Cangaceiro is not really a western, but made in the SW context I view it as a SW just like Scherp. But Taste of violence is somehow not really a SW, even if it shares a lot of motives with the later made Zapata films.
What an odd character Milian is in this, keeps you watching though. Colourful costumes and music, with a nice simple story. Was not knowing what to expect from this one, but enjoyed it more than I thought. The scene where Milian is eating at the large table is pretty good, my favourite scene.
The 1953 original has just been re-released in Brazil in a 2 disc DVD special edition with English subs:
http://www.dvdversatil.com.br/o-cangaceiro-em-dezembro/
Got my copy this morning ;D
Well have already watched this one not long ago, but made another view with the objective of making a propper review about it, this while the kid sleeps without colics and I can have some rest
Story
In my opinion and apart from the final showdown, that is inconsistent with the rest of the film, SW is not the main influence of this inconsistent work, Cinema Novo in the form of Glauber Rocha films and therefore Nouvelle Vague movement that already influenced the above mentioned director are the real driving influence of the film.
So it doesn’t fell like an western at all, Cangaçeiros and whats called Canganço are a very specific thing very distinct from North American cowboys or Mexican Bandidos. Like in every culture with Latin origins, there’s a lot of mysticism in it, and if you add some African magic and rituals, you get something with no parallel anywhere.
The political conditions in Northeast Brazil also helped to turn Cangaço into a particular case. There was a lot of violence that’s for sure, violence typical of places where live is difficult and hard, being decapitate for means of death proof was normal in those parts.
There was all kind of Cangaçeiros, those who worked for the powerful Landlords (named Coroneis in Brazil), those who were mavericks working for themselves real bandits, and those who were mercenaries, and contrary to what most people think, not so many with the Robin Wood attitude, but those also existed but weren’t the majority.
So the story of begins with the change of our hero or anti hero, from a peasant who survived a village massacre, that starts to believe he’s the reincarnation of Jesus while spreading the word as the redeemer, Into a intrepid and violent Cangaçeiro nothing bad for somehow who loved cows. If that first and more mystic part is done clearly under the Glauber Rocha influence, the section of the film where Millian character turns into arms is poorly displayed, with little objective reasons for the radical change.
The problem with Cangaçeiro is that being mostly inspired by Cinema Novo, it becomes a very uneven film, Cinema Novo and Rocha style of directing was very unconventional, and mixing that with a more traditional film approach, a normal adventure movie feeling, was a tricky job. That unorthodox mixing is reflected in the unbalanced narrative of the film.
Towards the end the Cinema Novo style is totally replaced by a mainstream approach, the gangsters are a totally strange element in the plot and completely forced into it, there where better solutions for the screenplay than gangster with suits and hats in the tropical heat of Brazil (butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid would never have worked for the Governor would they?), also the very normal happy ending is… well normal and totally an inept one.
Character development is in my opinion also an aspect where the film flops big time, if the narrative flow was irregular, at least the characters could have been solid ones, but no their not very well worked, and sometimes there little explanation is given for their acts. particular evident in Ugo Pagliai character, the confrontation of both western culture versus tropical/third world one could have been more well explored.
Actors
Of course Millian was the perfect SW actor choice for the part of the Redeemer, but to be honest I didn’t find it’s performance particularly inspired, not the overacting that spoiled for me, but I think it has to do with the flaws in the storyline, those flaws put his character in several modes depending on the scene he was making, that made is performance sometimes inconsistent with the film. Ugo Pagliali does a good Job in the Franco Nero kind of part, he’s a Mercenary type inspired character, Fajardo is a very good actor a villain here (something’s never change), but he has little screen time. Funny enough he was the main actor in a counterculture SW, with similar intentions as this one, El Bandido Malpejo, a film that suffered of little production means contrary to this one.
Director
Filmed in location, this must have been an important production for the time, carrying an entire production crew to Brazil wasn’t surely cheap in that period (there wasn’t a filming structure like in Almeria).
So with that in mind, making a film inspired in the work of such an avant-garde director as Rocha, is not what I call a good strategy for public success, things are even strange if other clear influence in the film is Jodorowsky El Topo, particularly visible in some scenes like the one of the swords fight. Directors like Woody Allen or Scorsese are quite good (regardless of the quality of their films) into insert their influences into their film (Fellini, Rossellini, and Bergman) without showing in it in a obvious way, Fago fails completely in that aspect, his references are too obvious, and that combine with an understandable need to make a film that a normal audience could watch, just turn Cangançeiro into an odd film that is neither one thing or another.
For instance the scene when Ugo character while searching for the Redeemer is informed by a pleasant that after the death of his wife, she was replaced by his daughter, this was the kind of statement intended to shock the viewer, but it’s the sort of straightforward stuff that Rocha or Jodorowsky would never do in their films, they weren’t so direct, they would upset the viewers in their own strange ways, and there are other examples of this during the film.
I guess Fago was well intentioned, getting away from the normal SW world, into something more exotic, the problem is that he falls right into the reference trap, normally who watches good cinema ends up doing good cinema also, not the case here.
In a more technical approach, the film lacks rhythm and some scenes are too long without apparent reason.
On another perspective concerning the film, Brazil faced some troubled political times in the period they done the filming, with some parallelism with Spain, but even worst at the time, the entire movement of Cinema Novo was fighting against the military regime that the country was under. In Cangançeiro there’s some political statements, the villagers are attacked, the workers are explored and work for food, the governor representing the political status quo of the time, is indeed the bad guy, but its not a deep thing, in the end works more like a normal fight of bad versus good, and not like as much as a class fight at least a symbolic one, so very far from the normal complexity or sometimes simplicity of Cinema Novo political arguments. They had to find some American gangsters, to replace Brazilian army, and in the end let’s not forget the biggest mistake of the film, the Redeemer was working for the government, with the goal of getting a nice farm for himself, yes he got rip off in the end, but becoming a mercenary for the regime killing other Cangaçeiros (all bad as snakes, and only caring for their gold) wasn’t something an army of the poor, Brancaleone style, with no land to work, most likely would do. They most probable would be sworn enemies of the Governor, no matter what he promised.
Fago others SW’s are fine (only watched one) and I’m fun of a very simple and unpretentious film he made a few years after this one The Violin Professor, but he misses the target in O Cangaçeiro, maybe that’s the motive he was 2 years without any direction credit.
Conclusion
So is it a bad film, well in conclusion is not entirely a bad film, above all it wasn’t a very well planed project, maybe a more adventure film approached, with still some political message, which to be honest was so common in other Western spaghetti, would have once again suited the film better, but that wast the opposite intention of the director.
Fago got carried away with the new cinema it was being made at the period and tried to make something different, but he failed, is not different just odd in a bad way, living in Western Europe, wasn’t the same of living in Brazil
The film does have some qualities, at least with the tropical surroundings there are some of the intended differences the director wanted to create, the visual aspect is also positive, with some good photography work. But the best thing in the film is the Soundtrack with popular /traditional (not Samba) music from the Sertão region of Brazil, in what would be called now World music, but very good something you could fit into a Cinema Novo work.
In the end I liked what was proposed to be achieved with this project, I just thing the creators fail to achieve it, still even with is flaws still a relevant work as an attempt to make things different in the SW world, comedy wasn’t the only answer to give new blood to the genre, pity they failed.
And yes it’s not SW to me and at the same time it is, confused? Well the most important SW connections aren’t the director the actors, or the script, to me is the attempted to search new paths to genre that connect the film into the SW world. I would give it 3 stars for the effort