Still making movies at 101
Famed Portuguese movie director Manoel de Oliveira, looking sprightly at 101, enjoyed the bright lights and was looking as calm and collected as any international star at the Cannes Film Festival last month.
And despite having produced a huge number of films since his first in 1931, the director’s effort shown at Cannes, ‘The Strange Case of Angelica’, was first conceived in 1946 and scripted in 1952, with recent additions taking in global warming, the economic crisis, and environmental pollution.
This film is about a young Jewish photographer called out in the night to take pictures of a woman just after her death.
Mr de Oliveira said “I thought of doing the film just after the Second World War. Hitler killed six million Jews in Europe and the Jews were fleeing to Portugal to fly to the States”.
The world’s oldest filmmaker said that although he does have some optimism about the fact that “nature is running wild” and the “economic crisis is very important indeed”, he also believes “there is a loss of values in the world that reminds me of Sodom and Gomorrah. We could end up in a similarly drastic situation,” Mr de Oliveira said.
