Following Apollinaire’s path: Manoel de Oliveira and the cinematographic vanguard in Portugal

Abstract

The work of Guillaume Apollinaire, a poet whose centenary of death motivates the reflections articulated in the present paper, stimulates us to revisit the artistic vanguards and the complex social problematic that modernity has engendered. I propose to analyze the inaugural film of the Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira (1908-2015) – “Labor on the Douro River” (1931) – in order to verify what this film has in common with, and how it differs from, the Futurist films framed in the so-called “urban symphonies” of modern cinema. It is important to underline the critical position of Oliveira in a moment of generalized euphoria in the face of advances in science and technology.