Afonso Brazza became a fireman for the love of the profession. He became a film director and actor for the same reason. Brazza became one of the most original directors of Brazilian cinema. He died at age 48, the victim of cancer. The documentary material was filmed before his death and shows our hero fighting fires in real life and fictional villains. Brazza was a dreamer. His story entertains and thrills.
After an extended period directing original screenplays, dos Santos returned to the creative engagement with literature that was the wellspring of his early masterpieces, offering a combinatory adaptation of five stories by the renowned Brazilian novelist João Guimarães Rosa. Openly embracing a mode of magical realism, dos Santos' celebrated film tells the story of a farming family defined by the absence of its father who abruptly abandoned his wife and children, sailing away down the river, including his son who continues to communicate with his father, speaking daily to him from the river bank. While offering an evocative vision of rural Brazil as a timeless land of mystery and solemnity, The Third Bank of the River is also bitingly satiric in the remarkable depiction of religious belief when the family moves to the city and its youngest member, a mesmerizing little girl, is revealed to be a kind of saint, capable of miraculous acts. -Harvard Film Archive
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