Brandos Costumes
Brandos Costumes (1974) is a Portuguese film directed by Alberto Seixas Santos which was a part of the Novo Cinema movement – influenced by the cinematographic neo-realism and specially by the Nouvelle Vague. It was released in 1975, when the political regime portrayed in the film (the Estado Novo) had already been destroyed. The film was released in "Cinema Londres", in Lisbon, on September 18, 1975. Synopsis. A portrait of the everyday life of a typical middle-class family in parallel with the fall of the Estado Novo, the 48-year dictatorship led by Salazar. The daughters' conflicts  and frustrations with their parents, their grandmother and their maid find an obvious echo in the country's collective events. The Carnation Revolution is about to explode. Historical context. As a rupturing film, "Brandos Costumes" is less identifiable by the presence of avant-garde aesthetics or an agile plot with a daring structure - not like Belarmino, by Fernando Lopes or O Cerco, by António da Cunha Telles - than by its ideological left-wing posture, taking a portrait of the social classes, and by its social and political sense of critic. Some characteristics of the new generation films, revolted with the  state of things and motivated to denounce the social injustices, are clearly present in "Brandos Costumes". The theatrical tone of the representation of this work let it be integrated in the tradition that Manoel de Oliveira (O Passado e o Presente - 1971) explores.