Voyage to the Beginning of the World

Born in 1908, Manoel de Oliveira is the only working director anywhere in the world who started his career in the silent era. For this meditative feature he enlisted the somewhat younger Marcello Mastroianni–in what proved to be Mastroianni’s last performance–to play someone very much like de Oliveira, an aging film director named Manoel setting out on a car trip with a few of his coworkers. Basically an exploration of the director’s Portuguese roots and the French and Portuguese roots of one of the actors, the film is laden with memories both personal and historical, and associations both cultural and familial; a moving (as well as slow-moving) road movie, it resembles many of de Oliveira’s other works in its paradoxical combination of 19th-century modernism and aristocratic Marxism. Not the least of its oddities is the fact that it starts out as a film about Manoel, then shifts focus halfway through to the French actor Jean-Yves Gautier, whose father was Portuguese and who’s meeting his Portuguese aunt for the first time. On the basis of a single viewing, I wouldn’t call this a great film on the level of de Oliveira’s Doomed Love or his recent Inquietude, but it’s one of his best since Valley of Abraham and one of his most accessible. Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday, September 10, 7:00 and 9:00; Saturday and Sunday, September 11 and 12, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, and 9:00; and Monday through Thursday, September 13 through 16, 7:00 and 9:00; 773-281-4114. –Jonathan Rosenbaum

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): film still.