Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco

Plot synopsis:
After a police round up of street children, Pixote is sent to a juvenile reformatory (FEBEM). The prison is a hellish school where Pixote uses glue sniffing as a means of emotional escape from the constant threats of abuse and rape.
It soon becomes clear that the young criminals are only pawns in the criminal, sadistic games of the prison guards and their commander.
When a boy dies of physical abuse by the guards, the officials frame (and ultimately kill) the lover of the transwoman known as Lilica (Jorge Julião) for the murder. Soon after, Pixote, Lilica and her new lover Dito (Gilberto Moura) find an opportunity to flee from the prison. First, they stay at the apartment of Cristal (Tony Tornado), a former lover of Lilica, but when tensions arise they go to Rio for a cocaine drug deal; there, however, they get duped by a showgirl.
After some time bumming around the city, Pixote and his friends go to a club for another drug deal. While there, Pixote finds the showgirl that took their drugs and stabs her.
They become pimps for the prostitute Sueli who is definitely past her prime and is ill—possibly from a botched abortion. The group conspires to rob her johns, but when Lilica's lover Dito falls for Sueli, Lilica leaves. The robbery scheme fails when an American john fights back (because he apparently does not understand Portuguese) so they have to shoot him. In the ensuing fight, Pixote accidentally shoots and kills Dito as well.
Pixote tries to gain comfort from Sueli, treating her as a mother figure, but she rejects him. He leaves and is seen walking down a railway line, gun in hand, away from the camera, his figure disappearing in the distance, out of the camera's view.

Tags: violence, murder, romantic

Review:
Perhaps the most brutal filmic portrait of youth ever made; Charles Dickens meets Hieronymous Bosch in this tale of a group of boys struggling to survive in the reformatories and mean streets of Brazil as the cycle of prey transformed into predators is documented.The saddest detail is to realize that this film, made almost twenty five years ago, documents a world that in terms of its poverty and depravity, has apparently changed very little.
A brutal reality captured here but with some of the most layered acting I've ever seen in the history of film by a group of amateurs picked from the streets of Sao Paulo with no previous experience.
Not one or two good performances, the entire cast is quite simply remarkable, and even sadder is the fact that most of them have probably now been swallowed by the street life they portrayed.Not as sophisticated a vision as Bunuel's 'Los Olvidados' or as sensational as Clarke's 'Kids,' but in this genre of 'children growing up in the streets' it is easily the most emotionally powerful film of them all..
What makes the film so heart-rending is that both Pixote and the actor portraying him clearly do not wish to be the characters life circumstances have made them.
Amazing, controversial, and painful are some essential adjectives to allocate this important piece of art, that depicts the searing and factual adolescence of the marginalized children; i.e. victims of our global village.Pixote prepubescent, with the unflinching stare of the innocent-all-knowing, left an impression of raw truth in finding credence to the old African saying, "It takes a village to raise a child".
It truly will stay with you forever--you will be touched in such a deep way no matter who you are, no matter where you're from, no matter what movie genre you favor.Considering that Da Silva's own life was one of the streets, leading to an early death at nineteen, when he was killed by corrupt cops in a drug raid, the film becomes all the more disturbing when we realize that Da Silva truly is Pixote in a circle of life imitating art imitating life.
Director Hector Babenco used real street kids as the actors, adding to the films brutal reality.
The book and the film are equally disturbing portrayals of Brazil's street children.
I would suggest people to watch the movie "Who killed Pixote?" so you can have a more in depth idea of the lives of these characters.
Pixote is a little boy left abandoned on the streets and has to live a life of pimping, thieving and worse.Cinema has many roles to play, including providing the population with general entertainment.
Millions of children don't have a childhood, some don't go on to have an adulthood (Fernando Ramos Da Silva - the star of this film - was himself murdered at 19), so I am glad that we have this movie as a testament to these forgotten people.
It's also not limited by the generics of the prison movie as a lot of the action takes place outside the prison walls.The main character, an extremely small boy, Pixote (pronounced Pichote), is especially winsome and actually played by a real life delinquent who was subsequently shot by police in a shoot-out.
It's painfully clear at some points though that he is just a skinny little boy that needs his mother.There is charisma to spare in the acting performances, including a youngster who does an extremely catchy homage to Roberto Carlos (the great Brazilian singer as opposed to football player) for the prison gig, and appears destined for stardom if he can stay alive.The kids are in peril because the police are beating them to death in order to find out who killed the judge, whilst the incompetent prison authorities turn a blind eye and fall into a state of apathy concerning the well-being of their wards (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil).Babenco appears fascinated by prison culture and in both this film and his return to the genre with Carandiru (2003) he uses nakedness to remind us of the fundamental vulnerability of the human captives in his film.
It's not easy to label the film as nightmarish because some of the experiences, even when negative, are extremely rich, and the friendships heartfelt.A classic faux pas of many non-Anglo movies is that whenever whites appear, they are cardboard cutouts, but here the old American john is as well-realised and succinctly characterised as he could be.Favourite scenes of mine include the post-glue-sniffing fascination of Pixote, and the half-lit dormitory riot which is truly mad..
I was a teenager when this picture was released in the theatre,but those time Brazil was under military rule,l'd visited a favela where an aunt mine lived for a couple time,l'd realized some strong poverty for all people whose lived in such place,somehow my country were in economic expansion allowed for to many people oportunities to get a proper job and they get it so easily,by the way all things shown in this picture were real....but nowadays with the new drugs like "Crack" and the new parallel powers of the gangs likes PCC and CV who rule all favelas over country the whole thing is getting worst sadly.....Pixote was a little sample what really are happening today,unfortunately Brazil was under an old corrupt pratices for a long time and even changing the political parties along lastest years the things didn't changes nothing......and the people don't help too much too!!!Resume:First watch: 1987 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 8.
This contemporary topic has been deftly handled by famous Brazilian director Hector Babenco in his film "Pixote, the law of the weakest" which is brutal yet an honest film about the vicious circle of violence whose victims happen to be children who have all been rejected by their families.
Some scenes and situations might shock sensitive viewers but "Pixote" doesn't fail to deliver home the message that life is stranger and harsher than filmed images as this film's protagonist Fernando Ramos da Silva was killed in 1987.
The film starts in São Paulo, Brazil and extends to the city of Rio. We are witnessing how orphan children are exploited and brought up in very bad conditions.
A deeply disturbing and heartbreaking neo-realist film, about an abandoned, unwanted 10 year old living first in a reformatory, and then on Brazil's mean streets.
Probably the weakest, most problematic moment is the opening, where the 'director' (Babenco, or an actor?) tells us that these actors are real people, gives us some facts and figures about them, and tells that their lives are much like those shown in the film.
What actually impressed me was that as the guy mentioned all the kid actors including the main character Pixote played by Fernando Ramos Da Silva were coming from the real world  from the poorest neighborhoods, with one mission in life  to survive.Drugs, rape, prostitution, murder  Pixote has seen them all, and after reading the biography of the actor I am inclined to think that he has seen this things much before the idea of crating of that movie came up.
The sad reality is that these same children/non-actors were in effect victimized themselves for this film; "discovered" (like the lead character) by the film crew off the streets due to their economic desperation, and thus willingness to do anything on film.
Some aren't alive some 20+ years later, for all anyone knows.The "star", pre-teen street kid Fernando Ramos da Silva, plays the title character, a youth without a father or really any family who will look out for him, and placed among dozens of other street kids and delinquents in a reformatory for boys.
None of this, I should repeat, is shown with a kind of ham-fisted earnestness- certainly you would never in a million years see Ron Howard or Paul Haggis direct this kind of picture- and yet there's an emotional honesty to everything exactly because nothing is trivialized.Nearly every scene is significant to showing how fragile life is for Pixote, and how he could be killed or die some way at any turn, and so without even reaching puberty yet he has to be on the level of those around him who are a little older (though not by much at all) and become things that will haunt this person forever.
As with De Sica, maybe more-so given the consistent conditions of San Paolo and Rio street kids, he's a natural director of children, and coax's out of Ramos da Silva and Jorge Julião and others some really fine work that provides just the right touches of "cinematic" drama (that is not so real that it becomes documentary, which isn't a bad thing per-say) and even subtlety in some scenes.Pixote may not be as well known as it's later 21st century Brazilian films that look back on the horrors of Rio, or even neo-realist films, but it should be.
Brazil Raw. The life of a boy in the streets of Sao Paulo, involved with little crimes, prostitution, and other things under the wing of corrupt police and other criminals.The film features Fernando Ramos da Silva (who was killed at the age of 19 by Brazilian police in São Paulo) as Pixote.
The movie is shot in the manner of a documentary and shows the strong influence by Italian neorealism in that amateur actors were used whose real lives strongly resembled those of the protagonists in the film.This is by far the most "raw" a film about juvenile crime has ever been.
I really don't mean to be cruel towards the street kids who suffered in real life, I just don't think that making a supposedly "documentary" film is a good idea.
There are ghettos in America like the ones in Brazil, so it is a common, but sad, truth.Pixote had to be a foreign language film because Hollywood would never shoot some of the scenes Hector Babenco did.
Hector Babenco gives us one uncompromising and brutal look at the lives of the street boys in Brazil's largest city Sao Paulo.
One only hopes that it is 35 years since Pixote was released and the hope is things have improved for these kids who have to grow up way before their time.The films centers on the title character played by a young actor who himself never made it out of the slums.
Babenco used real street kid Fernando Ramos DaSilva as the ten year old Pixote who was killed at the age of 19 in a homicide that still raises questions.
Over two decades before the release of Fernando Meirelles' ultra-violent crime saga depicting feral youth growing up too fast in Rio, "Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco" set the bar as high as Christ the Redeemer overlooks the city in terms of capturing an accurate reality of the brutal favela life.
To speak relatively, if one were only to see now Hector Babenco's "Pixote" (1981, Brazil;pronounced as "pi-shot"), after having seen quite a number of films that deal with street children, juvenile delinquents, kids in trouble (Truffaut's "The 400 Blows", Bunuel's "Los Olvidados", De Sica's "Shoeshine", Nair's "Salaam, Bombay!", Bresson's "Mouchette", Nugroho's "Leaf on a Pillow", etc.), one might be afraid that the plight of the kid portrayed in the film might not affect one anymore, having been "de-synthesized" already after going through the emotional roller-coaster ride put in motion by the previously quoted films.Thankfully, that won't be the case.
For Babenco narrates his film in such a matter-of-fact manner ("artlessly", as one film reviewer put it, in a positive light) and that his central child performer, Fernando Ramos da Silva (13 years old at that time and a street kid himself), gives such a no-frills, wounded performance, raw in its simplicity (that hardened face, those lonely and longing eyes) that one is hard put not to be pierced in any way.
(Such a feeling may achieve such a heightened realism when one learns that the child had only lived but a short life, having been involved in street crimes after the film and subsequently murdered.)In about first half of the film, Pixote and his fellow street kids and delinquents spend their time in a repressive state-run reformatory school, where brutalization and humiliation, rape and murder, are the norm and culture;where they are forced to confess to their "crimes", on the flimsy notion that under the Brazilian law, underage felons are not "punishable" for their offenses.
With that scene, Babenco may just be doing an homage (amongst many other homages found in different films!) to the iconoclastic final scene in Truffaut's "The 400 Blows".But whereas we got to know what has become of Antoine Doinel three years later in the short film "Antoine et Colette" (as well as in three other feature films in the years thereafter), we are left grappling in the dark as to what lies ahead for Pixote after he finally disappears from the last frame, that being the last time that we'll get to see this real-life street child (notwithstanding the fate that eventually befell him in actuality)."Pixote" may not be as nearly as whimsical as "The 400 Blows" or as hallucinatory as "Los Olvidados", but it still stands out among films of similar theme and texture because of its simple, raw power..
And each time I watch, there is a point when a smile breaks over my face, the scene of PiXOTE and LILICA at the beach and CHICO commets on how he wishes ROBERTO, PEG LEG were there, this is a part of my childhood this is a part of me because what Hector Babenco communicated to me through this film wasn't LOOK AT THE PLIGHT OF THESE CHILDREN but LOOK AT THE PLIGHT OF HUMANITY, US!
Powerful movie about street life in Brazil..
You follow the life of the main character (a young boy Pixote) as he tries to survive the mean streets of San Paulo.
You will see how poverty and the constant struggle for a daily existence will damage the young characters in this movie for the rest of their lives.I would highly recommend everyone to see this film if you want to get a glimpse of what it is like to live in the so called "third world" and how the victimization goes on daily agains the powerless members of those societies..
Pixote is one of my favourites films,Hector Babenco used real kids from `the favelas', street kids, and focus his story in one kid : Fernando.
The kids watch all that kind of things happens around them: murders, prostitution, drugs, corruption, police abuse and involved in them.
After you watch Pixote don´t miss `Quem matou Pxote?' cause explain the life of the young boy(Fernando) after the film who makes him a star and how he becames a delinquent again, it´s a good movie if you loved Pixote.
"Pixote" concerns the (mis)adventures of the eponymous hero, a pre-adolescent boy in urban Brazil, abandoned by his parents, who first endures the horrors of a youth prison, and then those of life on the street.
Filmed in a quasi-documentary style with real street kids instead of professional actors (for the most part), "Pixote" will leave the viewer utterly devastated at the end of its 2+ hours.
It is particulary effective when it develops other characters as they are seen by Pixote, especially those of the streetwise transvestite homosexual Lilica and the aging alcoholic prostitute Sueli (unforgettably portrayed by Marilia Pera, one of the few pro actors in the cast), who become surrogate parents to the young boy in a kind of improvised family whose economy is based on mugging Sueli's clients.
I first saw Pixote over 20 years ago, and the thing that I always think about the movie is how, when I was first watching it, my friend who was also watching it nudged me and whispered "His face...look at his face", referring to Fernando Ramos De Silva.
"His face is growing harder, and older, and angry...how do you ACT that?"  It's true: watch the movie and you'll notice that the face of Pixote becomes visibly more and more changed over time due to the life that he lives.
The film opens with the director talking to the camera and saying he is going to show a story about Brazilain street kids whose families live in poverty and must steal and kill to survive.
In fact the main character (Pixote) was played by an actual street kid only 11 years old.
Their survival is hard to watch with other street children, prostitutes, etc., and you begin to wonder HOW can things like this be allowed to happen in this world.Pixote is not a film for entertainment, it is a film of information.
The subtitle of the film literally means 'the law of the weakest' and here Babenco presents us with a harrowing and all too realistic portrayal of the life of a Brazilian street child.
Pixote (Fernando Ramos Da Silva) is a 10 year old boy who is taken from the streets of Sao Paulo by the police along with a group of other boys.
Everything is left to the actors who are filmed in a chilling matter-of-fact style which makes you feel almost as if you were there watching the horror of the boys lives first hand.The acting is astounding, particularly when you consider that many of the cast had no previous acting experience.
All of the child actors in Pixote are from Brazil's streets, coaxed into the film by Babenco in order to call attention to their living conditions.
What makes Da Silva's portrayal of Pixote even more poignant to me is that after completing the film he went on to sink back into poverty and crime, and at age 19 was shot dead by police who claimed he was involved in a robbery.