A grande arte: from the transgression of the noir to the “outside” look in the film adaptation

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the adaptation of the novel A Grande Arte to the film directed launched in 1991. The article addresses the problem: Walter Salles’s movie signals an rectification point of one of the identity marks of the Brazilian cinematography by admitting an audiovisual proposition technically high quality that departs from the tradition of the “poor cinema.” Since the novel by Rubem Fonseca makes a transgressing adaptation of the noir in its North-American matrix, which are the effects of Walter Salles’s movie on our cinematography by aligning itself with the pattern of the North-American crime films in regard to its “quality standard”? In methodological terms, the article assumes an interpretative and analytic framework based on film analysis procedures, allied with contributions related to the Film Noir and interpretations of the trajectory of the Brazilian cinematography. The article seeks to give inputs to the discussions about the inter-cultural relations in the core of the contemporary mediatic fiction.