Glauber Rocha’s sophomore feature is a scorched-earth allegory about the blind followers of dead-end ideologies. Somewhere in the Brazilian hinterlands of the 1940s, ranch hand Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) becomes an outlaw after killing his swindling boss. He pledges allegiance to Sebastião (Lidio Silva), a self-styled holy man who preaches revolt against rich landowners even as he perpetrates unspeakable acts of violent zealotry against the innocent. While the landowners hire a mercenary (Maurício do Valle) to take out Sebastião, Manoel and his wife Rosa (Yoná Magalhães) join cangaceiros Corisco (Othon Bastos) and Dadá (Sonia Dos Humildes), only to find themselves once more in league with evil, deluded forces. Steeped in history, myth, religion, and politics, and suffused with the feverish intensity of the blistering desert, Black God, White Devil is one of the Cinema Novo movement’s most uncompromising statements on current social issues as well as the universal problem of mindless fanaticism. (Glauber Rocha, Brazil, 1964, 120 min., b&w) In Portuguese with English subtitles

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