El Dorado, a fictional country. Paulo, a poetrywriting intellectual, oscillates between the political extremes. First he devotes himself to the right-wing conservative Diaz, until he sees through the latter's pseudo-religious fascism. Then he takes the side of Vieira, the populist reformer who wants to free the country of its misery. But Paulo's true love is for Sara, the communist who works for Vieira. Paulo is forced to realize that both are interested only in power, not in change, and that they are willing to use any means to achieve their ends. Disappointed and despairing, he sets off on his own path as a revolutionary, a path on which Sara is no longer able to follow him. He is shot and dies a lonely death, with a gun in his hand, sending a signal for others to take up arms. "Earth Entranced" is the masterpiece of Glauber Rochas, the brilliant renewer of Brazilian cinema. Rochas was the first director to paint a complex picture of the power structure of his country; his critique did not spare himself or the intellectual elite. He depicted politics as a delirium, and did so with the congenial means of a delirious aesthetics: an artistic mixture of divergent elements: realistic-documentary, surrealistic, operatic, poetic, and mytholo-gical. He succeeds like no other in creating out of this confusing burgeoning of heterogeneous forms the symbiosis he once called Tropicalism. The Forum presents "Earth Entranced" for the first time outside of Brazil, in a new, restored version.
Production: Mapa Filmes, Difilm
Screenplay: Glauber Rocha
Cinematographers: Luís Carlos Barreto, Dib Lutfi
Editor: Eduardo Escorel Original
Composer: Sérgio Ricardo
Cast: Jardel Filho, Paulo Autran, José Lewgoy, Glauce Rocha
Format/screen ratio: 35mm, 1:1.66, b/w
Running time: 114 min., 24 frames/sec.
Language: Portuguese
