Most of the mysteries referred to in the title are of the kind found in those immense, ultra-melodramatic serialised novels that kept 19th-century readers waiting for the next issue. The generous documentary extras included with this new release explain that the super-prolific Camilo Costelo Branco, whose 1854 serial novel Mysteries of Lisbon is adapted here, sometimes wrote these long-running, cliffhanging narratives. So here we have all of the mothers dead in childbirth, multiple identities, long-shot coincidences, crimes of passion, stories-within-stories-within-stories, and other tasty ingredients that make those books fun to read even today.
MYSTERIES OF LISBON (Misterios de Lisboa, Portugal/France, 2011, 272 minutes, colour) directed by Raul Ruiz and starring Adriano Luz, Maria Joao Bastos, Joao Arrais, Ricardo Pereira, Joao Baptista, Clotilde Hesme and Jose Alfonsa Pimentel. In Portuguese and French with optional English subtitles. The three-disc Region A Blu-ray edition includes three discs, two for the film and one for extras that include a long interview about the film with director Ruiz, an interview with the screenwriter Carlos Saboga, and various discussions and documentaries.
Ruiz's film version of Mysteries of Lisbon begins by introducing "Joao", a 14-year-old boy (Arrais) in an early 19th-century Catholic orphanage, who has no idea who his father and mother are but is determined to find out. Since even his real name is unknown, he has been given the single name Joao, and puts up with "bastard" taunts and abuse from the other boys until one blow on the head puts him into a coma, during which he is cared for by the priest, Padre Denis (Luz). During moments of semiconsciousness he sees a mysterious woman bending over him with a loving gaze. Might she be his mother?
The short answer is "yes", but the long answer is a plot so labyrinthine that any attempt to summarise it would make even patient readers throw the paper down and run screaming into the street. In stories of this kind it goes without saying that an orphan like Joao's origins must involve scandalous goings-on in the upper levels of society, and true to form he is revealed to actually be Pedro de Silva, the product of an unsanctified union between the upper-class girl Angela de Lima (Joao Bastos) and a well-born but impoverished suitor (Baptista), whom her dictatorial father will not allow her to marry, forcing her instead to wed a nobleman whom she does not love.
Pretty standard stuff, but this basic situation serves only as a launching pad from which the movie fires off plot after plot. Characters are introduced who seem peripheral, but who are soon narrating histories of their own, tangled plots that intersect with the previous ones to reveal that very little was as it seemed to be. Before the first hour is complete it is clear that although Pedro de Silva's identity and background gave the film its lift-off, its centre is Padre Denis, a man who over the years had changed identities like shirts, and a cohort, first introduced as a murderous robber called "Knife Eater", who is just as much of a chameleon. Both men are pillars that support the structures of the film's constantly exfoliating and enmeshing plots.
Much of these plots resemble the mechanisms of the late 18th-century English Gothic novels, as does the way the characters behave, seeming to lead their whole lives at the highest emotional pitch. As in those tomes, both men and women often drop to the floor in faints when experiencing humiliation or shock surprises. One character even describes the behaviour of another as being like something from a novel by Ann Radcliffe, a queen of the literary Gothic movement.
Besides the mysteries conjured by novelist Branco, Ruiz embellishes the film with some of his own. There are surreal touches, like the little paper stage, resembling the structures that rise up in Czech pop-up books, in which the boy Pedro watches incidents from the film acted out by paper cut-out figures, brief interludes that don't match the more realistic tone that prevails elsewhere. Some scenes seem inexplicable, including one following a failed duel in which the adult Pedro commits suicide with a pistol, but remains alive and well throughout the rest of the film. The tantalising conclusion invites the question of how much of what came before is reliable.
The entire film looks beautiful, and Music Box's Blu-ray transfer is flawless. It was originally shot as a six-hour series for Portuguese television, then edited down to a more manageable four-and-a-half hours for theatrical screenings, much like some of Bergman's films and the Giordana's Italian favourite, The Best of Youth were. The lavishness of the decor and attention to detail apparent in every scene give no hint of its TV series origin.
In an interview included with the extras, Ruiz mentions the new possibilities opened up by HD technology. Close-ups of the kind usual in TV dramas with the face filling the entire screen are really useful, he says, only for dermatologists, not directors. He explains that with high-definition filming, medium distance shots that permit the background to be seen look just as intimate as the old extreme close-ups, and have a different emotional effect. His claims are borne out throughout his hypnotic film.
After the surprise success of this film Ruiz, who died recently, was planning to make a sequel to Mysteries of Lisbon based on another, related Branco novel. What a film that might have been!
