Sea song... Maria do Mar (1930), with Stephen Horne and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, Bonn Silent Film Days 2024

This film announces itself as a dramatized documentary about the lives of fishermen from Nazaré, and is more fiction than the "controlled actuality" of Robert Flaherty even as it is clearly influenced by his approach.  It concerns a woman and a boat both called Maria do Mar which form the basis of a love story that splits a community in the then much smaller town on the Costa de Prata – a kind of pescatarian Romeo and Juliet in which the drama dominates leaving the documentary to filter through and infuse the overall entertainment.

 

Talking of which, for the accompaniment, Stephen Horne’s flute, piano and accordion is mixed with Elizabeth-Jane Baldry’s harp with telepathic cohesion as they ride the unfolding waves from stillness to storm. Elizabeth has only one instrument but a huge range of sound from the thunderous deep notes to the high-end beauty of her strings and the thumping dread of the harp’s frame. The two work so well together, extemporising in solo whilst coming together on pre-arranged loose themes and creating a mix that has such sympathetic force with the action on screen. This is another one I’d love to have seen live but thanks again to the Festival for streaming such treasures.

 

Villagers haul the boat ashore

All begins in the bright sun as José Leitão de Barros’ camera drifts over the bleached white streets of Nazaré, pointing at a Dutch angle down one long street, perhaps leading our eye back to the recent past. We see the fishing boat Maria do Mar – Maria of the Sea – as it arrives on the beach after a successful expedition. The people of the village rush down to pull the ship onto the sand and we get to meet some of the main characters, the captain Falacha (Alves da Cunha) and his daughter Maria (Rosa María) also of the sea. Then there’s one of his land-based team, Tia “Ilhôa” Aurélia (Adelina Abranches) and her young son Manuel (Oliveira Martins) who hasn’t gone to sea yet.

 

As the village hauls the ship and lands the catch there’s also some comic relief in the perpetually hungry Turkey (Álvaro Horta e Costa) and his weaselly pal Lacraio (António Duarte) along with host of weather-worn locals young and old whose character speaks as eloquently as the sand, sea and rocks around them.

 

The fishermen return to their small houses for lashings of freshly-cooked fish soup, cooked by Rosa and her mother (Perpetua dos Santos) and the older crew as they celebrate Falacha’s birthday. Events are cut short though as a storm is brewing and the Captain has to decide whether to save the nets – still set out at sea – before the force of the sea becomes unstoppable. There’s some good work from de Barros as the village is mobilised and all run down the whitewashed streets to the beach even as Ilhôa counsels against it – better to lose the nets than her husband. What the film lacks here in convincing special effects it makes up for with reaction shots from anxious villagers, some in close up others on rocky outcrop warning the fisherman to avoid a course too close to the treacherous outcrop.

 

Alves da Cunha

Murderer! It was your ambition that lost them!

 

It’s all to no avail though and the Maria do Mar is lost, seemingly with all hands, until a loan figure staggers out of the foam, the captain has survived. With so many dead, and her warning still painfully fresh, Ilhôa leads the complaints against Falacha who ultimately cannot bear the guilt and the next day, after prayers and family is not enough, he takes the only honourable course he feels he has left and drowns himself in the bleakest of fashions, walking into the sea leaving his wife and daughter behind.

Time passes with the two families bitterly divided by the tragedy as they carry on their lives with their men and main breadwinners, lost. Maria toils in the fields whilst Manual avoids the military draft being his mother’s only source of income – a scene which mixes pathos with some comedy as his mother places her tiny frame on the scales, the viewer in no doubt she’d be an asset in any battle.

 

The mood shifts as we see Maria and her friends out on the beach, stripped down to their petticoats for a trip out on a boat and a swim. Amidst the sparkle of the water and the dazzle of the sun on their bleached underclothes, they don’t notice that one swimmer has drifted too far out and is in distress. Luckily a group of the young men are nearby and Manuel launches himself into the waves to save the young woman. de Barros makes this the most romantic of rescues, with lingering shots of the muscularity of Manuel and Maria’s partially exposed body hung limp with near exhaustion. It’s like a ballet as they drop silently to the sand having pulled free of the sea and only then does the boy realise exactly who he has saved.

 

No brave deed goes unrewarded or, in this case, unpunished, as the couple are brought close as they were always destined to do whilst their mothers resist with all their might, Ilhôa even bringing in an enchantress to cast a curse on the doorstep of her neighbour – none of us can pretend that’s something we’ve never considered… The push and pull grows stronger though and you’ll have to watch it for yourself to see if love can prevail against this harsh and, literally, unforgiving environment.

 

Rosa María and Oliveira Martins

It's a beautiful film and one that presents its ethnography in the most stylised of ways with huge close-ups of the people adding to the natural scale and serving to sensitise the individual conflicts and love. I can see why it is considered one of the most significant Portuguese silent films and how it is influenced by other European techniques even as it creates that unique flavour. One of the most striking things about silent film is how the new media reflects the traditions of storytelling, performance and national style. Never since have we had the same freshness of transition with each generation relying on previous cinematic technique which here, we see for almost the first time.

 

In the notes, Patrica Viera is quoted* linking the film to the burgeoning Salazarism movement with the idea that “… society was the reproduction of nature in the realm of human relations”. There was an emphasis on “natural cinema” showing the Portuguese living naturally and “habitually” all of which would serve a more conservative mindset as António de Oliveira Salaza came to power in 1932 and went on to serve as Prime Minister until 1968. But that’s a different story: silent film is always an education.

 

The film was restored by Cinemateca Portuguesa in 2021 and along with the sublime accompaniment I hope again that we get to see this all on the big screen in the UK.

 

* Patricia Vieira: Portuguese Film, 1930-1960. The Staging of the New State Regime. New York, London 2013