General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

A Falecida

A Falecida (English: The Deceased) is a 1965 Brazilian black-and-white drama film directed by Leon Hirszman, adapted from the 1953 stage play of the same name by the dramatist Nelson Rodrigues (1912–1980). It was Hirszman's first feature film and the screen debut of Fernanda Montenegro, who plays Zulmira, a suburban Rio de Janeiro housewife obsessed with her own death and with the idea of a luxurious funeral.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director / debut	Leon Hirszman's first feature film; screenplay by Hirszman and Eduardo Coutinho¹^•⁴
Source	Stage play A Falecida by Nelson Rodrigues, written in 1953 (the Nelson Rodrigues institute's site gives 1954)¹^•⁴
Lead performance	Fernanda Montenegro as Zulmira, her first film role; she won best actress at the 1st Semana do Cinema Brasileiro in Brasília, 1965²^•⁵
Format	Black and white, 35 mm, 85 minutes, produced in Rio de Janeiro from 1964⁵
Recognition	Special jury prize at the 1st Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival (1965); shown hors concours at the Venice festival the same year⁴
Reception	A box-office failure on release, later ranked among the 100 best Brazilian films by the Brazilian film critics' association (Abraccine)⁶
Preservation	Digital restoration completed in 2009 by the Cinemateca Brasileira; restored copy released on DVD in 2010⁷^•³

Spoilers

Plot

Zulmira lives a poor, monotonous life in a Rio de Janeiro suburb with her unemployed husband Toninho (Ivan Cândido), a football fanatic. After a fortune-teller, Madame Crisálida, warns her about a blonde woman in her life, Zulmira suspects her cousin Glorinha. Convinced she is dying, she visits the funeral home São Sebastião and orders its most expensive coffin, ostensibly for a friend, and joins the Theophilist Church, a faith created by Nelson Rodrigues for his plays that holds divine healing superior to medicine.⁵^•⁸

A doctor finds nothing wrong with her, but she falls ill in earnest. On her deathbed she instructs Toninho to obtain 85 mil cruzeiros from João Guimarães Pimentel (Paulo Gracindo), the richest man in the neighborhood, to pay for a lavish funeral. In the conversation Toninho learns that Zulmira had been Pimentel's lover and that Glorinha had witnessed the affair. After blackmailing Pimentel, Toninho keeps the money, orders the cheapest coffin in the same funeral home, and, while the funeral takes place, weeps in the stands at the Maracanã stadium watching a match.⁵

Production

The film was produced by Meta Produções Cinematográficas, with Joffre Rodrigues, the playwright's son, and Aluizio Leite Garcia as producers. José Medeiros directed the photography, in one of his first cinema jobs, Dib Lutfi operated the camera, Nello Melli edited, and Radamés Gnatalli arranged the music over a theme by the samba composer Nelson Cavaquinho, including the song "Luz negra".⁵^•⁹ Montenegro recalled that everything about the production was a first: Hirszman's first direction, Medeiros's first cinematography, Joffre Rodrigues's first production.¹⁰ The cast also includes Nelson Xavier as the funeral salesman Timbira, Joel Barcelos, Hugo Carvana, and the samba composer Zé Keti; José Wilker appears uncredited in the funeral sequence, his screen debut.⁵^•¹¹

Style and adaptation

Hirszman came to the film from the Centro Popular de Cultura of the National Student Union, and A Falecida belongs to the Cinema Novo (Brazilian film movement of socially conscious, stylistically austere 1960s cinema) movement, with location shooting in the suburb of Sampaio and a sober, observational style.¹²^•³ Critics have described the screenplay as taking distance from the Rodrigues universe: where the play presents Zulmira as an "alucinada" (a delirious woman), Hirszman treats her as an "alienada", an alienated one, and shifts the tragic register toward the social conditions of suburban life, unemployment, and the escape of football.⁶^•¹³ Hirszman himself said the film drew on his own close knowledge of the suburb, unemployment, women's self-destruction, and football.¹⁴

Nelson Rodrigues did not welcome the result. He judged the adaptation harshly, saying its failure was "exactly the lack of humor".¹⁵ The film was also a commercial failure, though it made more of an impact abroad than in Brazil.⁶^•¹⁶

Release and afterlife

The film was screened in Paris in April 1965 in a film week organized by the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and represented Brazilian cinema at the Critics' Week for young directors at Cannes, 7 to 14 May 1965. It received a special jury prize at the 1st Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, where it screened in competition on 17 September 1965, and was shown hors concours at the Venice festival that year. Federal censorship certificates of July and August 1965 classified it as unsuitable for viewers under 18, and it opened commercially in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro theaters in November 1965.⁵^•⁴

Montenegro won best actress at the 1st Semana do Cinema Brasileiro in Brasília, the festival later known as the Festival de Brasília, and the film also took best film, director, actor (Gracindo), and screenplay prizes at the 2nd Teresópolis festival in 1965.⁵^•⁶ Fifty years after release, the Brazilian film critics' association ranked it among the 100 best Brazilian films of all time.⁶ The Cinemateca Brasileira completed a digital restoration in 2009 as part of its Leon Hirszman project, and Videofilmes released the restored copy on DVD in 2010 with interviews and two of the director's shorts as extras.⁷^•³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1960s › Released 1960 to 1965

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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