I saw 'The Destiny' in July 1996 at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna; they screened a restored print with the original Portuguese intertitles. This creaky melodrama is an extremely silly film, and I sat through it only because I've seen very few Portuguese silent films and I'd wanted to get a better sense of that nation's film product from the silent era.
'The Destiny' reminds me of 'Last Year at Marienbad' for all the WRONG reasons. We see some beautiful, well-dressed people in a posh locale: their backgrounds are an enigma to us, and also to each other. Unfortunately, all similarity ends there. 'Marienbad' was intentionally cryptic for the sake of being cryptic: the makers of 'The Destiny' clearly want to pull a succession of rabbits out of their figurative hat, astonishing us with a series of surprising revelations ... but the end result is merely ludicrous.
The story (such as it is) takes place among a colony of Portuguese aristocrats in Brazil. The pillar of this community is Countess Maria Da Silva Oliveira. The colony's languid existence is disrupted by the arrival of an elderly blind man (Antonio Pinheiro) who seems to harbour a dark secret. Then comes the even more sudden arrival of a mysterious black-clad middle-aged lady (Maria Branco) who -- get this, please -- has amnesia.
SPOILERS NOW. In the course of determining this lady's identity, the countess discovers that the amnesiac is her own (the countess's) mother, and the blind man is the amnesiac's father, therefore her own (the countess's) grandpa! What's the Portuguese for "hoo boy"? Further, it develops that various relationships between various members of the colony are not what they seem. It turns out that each and every member of the colony is in some manner a mere (gasp!) pawn of Destiny.
Oh, blimey! Here we have an early example of what would later become known in Italy as a 'white telephone' movie: a film concerning itself with the idle rich, and expecting the rest of us to give a hoot about their alleged problems. Since 'O Destino' was made for a Portuguese audience, it's not surprising that all the characters are Portuguese, but I was annoyed that the film-makers chose to set this story in a Portuguese colony in Brazil, thus giving it an imperialist undertone that was possibly not intended. It was difficult enough for me to care about these wealthy layabouts, but I had even less enthusiasm for them when I realised that their leisure was probably obtained from the toil of Brazilian peons.
This film's message is that each of us is helpless in the face of Destiny. Fair enough, but I was annoyed that the film-makers chose to use a colony of wealthy aristocrats as their microcosm to symbolise all of humanity. It would have been a more humanist -- and more interesting -- drama if they'd chosen a broader cross-section of Portuguese society for their cast of characters. My rating for this one is only 4 out of 10, and that's mostly for the production design and photography.
'The Destiny' reminds me of 'Last Year at Marienbad' for all the WRONG reasons. We see some beautiful, well-dressed people in a posh locale: their backgrounds are an enigma to us, and also to each other. Unfortunately, all similarity ends there. 'Marienbad' was intentionally cryptic for the sake of being cryptic: the makers of 'The Destiny' clearly want to pull a succession of rabbits out of their figurative hat, astonishing us with a series of surprising revelations ... but the end result is merely ludicrous.
The story (such as it is) takes place among a colony of Portuguese aristocrats in Brazil. The pillar of this community is Countess Maria Da Silva Oliveira. The colony's languid existence is disrupted by the arrival of an elderly blind man (Antonio Pinheiro) who seems to harbour a dark secret. Then comes the even more sudden arrival of a mysterious black-clad middle-aged lady (Maria Branco) who -- get this, please -- has amnesia.
SPOILERS NOW. In the course of determining this lady's identity, the countess discovers that the amnesiac is her own (the countess's) mother, and the blind man is the amnesiac's father, therefore her own (the countess's) grandpa! What's the Portuguese for "hoo boy"? Further, it develops that various relationships between various members of the colony are not what they seem. It turns out that each and every member of the colony is in some manner a mere (gasp!) pawn of Destiny.
Oh, blimey! Here we have an early example of what would later become known in Italy as a 'white telephone' movie: a film concerning itself with the idle rich, and expecting the rest of us to give a hoot about their alleged problems. Since 'O Destino' was made for a Portuguese audience, it's not surprising that all the characters are Portuguese, but I was annoyed that the film-makers chose to set this story in a Portuguese colony in Brazil, thus giving it an imperialist undertone that was possibly not intended. It was difficult enough for me to care about these wealthy layabouts, but I had even less enthusiasm for them when I realised that their leisure was probably obtained from the toil of Brazilian peons.
This film's message is that each of us is helpless in the face of Destiny. Fair enough, but I was annoyed that the film-makers chose to use a colony of wealthy aristocrats as their microcosm to symbolise all of humanity. It would have been a more humanist -- and more interesting -- drama if they'd chosen a broader cross-section of Portuguese society for their cast of characters. My rating for this one is only 4 out of 10, and that's mostly for the production design and photography.
