User reviews

This award-winning 1981 film is as realistic a portrait as exists about the struggles of working-class families in industrializing Brazilian cities. The two families whose stories are told, live out the contradictions, violence, and almost overwhelming difficulties that are part of living in Sao Paulo, Latin America's most industrialized metropolis. The film won Fernanda Montenegro (CENTRAL STATION) one of her first international best actress awards, and the film itself was awarded the Special Jury Prize in 1981 at the Cannes Film Festival. It's definitely one of the best films to have come out of Brazil in the 80's.

In São Paulo, the worker Tião (Carlos Alberto Riccelli) is the son of the idealistic Otávio (Gianfrancesco Guarnieri), who tries to organize the workers with his friend Bráulio (Milton Gonçalves) against the exploitation of the employers. Tião's girlfriend, the also worker Maria (Bete Mendes), got pregnant and he decides to get married with her in a hurry. Tião was raised in the repressive period of the Brazilian dictatorship and is very afraid of losing his job, while his father has a totally different political position. Tião believes that the struggle between classes never changes, while his father has an opposite opinion, having confidence in better days. His mother Romana (Fernanda Montenegro) is the balance of their family. The dramatic story is not conclusive, portraying a period in Brazilian history when the workers were trying to organize the strikes and other movements against the employer, after a long period of dictatorship. Having a magnificent interpretation of an outstanding cast, this movie was awarded with the Golden Lion – Special Jury Prize - in Cannes Festival (1981), and also awarded in minor international festivals in Cuba (1981), France (1981) and Colombia (1983), besides winning four prizes in a national festival (Air France). In the present days, the president of Brazil is a former worker, derived from the labor union and elected by the hopeful people, with the expectation of improving the life of our suffered people. He was one of the men who fought against the dictatorship and organized the movement of workers in Brazil. Ironically, he seems to have forgotten his campaign promises and origin, and Brazil has presently one of the highest unemployment rate in our history. In the end, unfortunately it seems that Tião was right. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): `Eles Não Usam Black Tie' (`They Do Not Wear Black Tie')

A film with great national actors, shows the maturity of the people, the shock of generations, and principles in improving working conditions, an engaging and beautiful film, highly recommended.

The filmmaker Leon Hirszman, who was a great documentarist, made few films, but great, I quote from São Bernardo in 1972. As protagonists we have the great Gianfrancesco Guarnieri (The Quatrilho of 1995) and Fernanda Montenegro (Central of Brazil in 1995).

Beautiful political movie about the automotive Union fights for a better life. The struggles between 2 generations in the same family: father and son. It was based on a theatrical play with an amazing screenplay.

This movie contains one of the most beautiful and sensitive scenes in cinema: wife and husband sorting and picking beans from the table, the camera focus in their eyes, hands and faces, with no single word spoken. That's enough for us to feel the bonds between them.

Latin American cinema is always hard to understand, and being a latin american myself i think i can shed some light into this movie. Its mostly a period piece, taking place soon after famous brazilian dictatorship period (1964-1984), a mostly righ-wing endeavor that left Brazil with deep scars, not only in the political department but in the cultural as well.

And as a period piece this movie really shines, encapturing Brazil social problems and culture with a very realistic tone.

Unfortunatelly thats when the good thing stop since, apart from Montenegro's shining performance and Guarnieri perfectly portraying "himself" the other actors struggle to do a decent job, most of the times they seem to be reading the lines and the restored version has some problems with audio sync, something that really takes you out of the movie.

On one hand the director tries to do sympathy with Tiao, the main character, that is put in an unfortunate position, having to choose between taking the side of his fellow workers and join a strike or keep working to provide for his family, but soon as the movie is getting close to the end this simpathy goes away and the black and white (us and them) views of the director and writer, always trying to push the class struggle agenda, really show.

The movie is, in the end, a very heavy handed political panflet, ignoring the many sides of a complicated problem and relying heavily in the "traitor! traitor!" argument, one that, as we may as well know, is not new to the political side of things.