(José Leitão de Barros, Portugal 1942, 87 min., 35mm nitrate, sound, b/w)
Print source: Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal
José Leitão de Barros (1896–1967) was one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of Portuguese cinema. A film critic and a publisher, Barros was well acquainted with international film trends when he directed the short documentary Nazaré, Praia de Pescadores (1929) and the feature-length docudrama Maria do Mar (1930). Both were filmed in the same fishing village and were influenced, to some extent, by the European film avant-gardes, particularly by contemporary Soviet cinema. During this period, he also directed Lisboa Crónica Anedótica (1930), a documentary feature that unequivocally echoes the European city symphonies genre, as well as A Severa (1931), the first Portuguese sound film, which was recorded at Joinville Studios in Paris. During the 1930s and 1940s, Barros consolidated his career by directing four shorts and ten feature films, including biopics, popular comedies, historical adaptations, and short propaganda documentaries.
Ala-Arriba! (1942) concludes his trilogy about the sea and fishing communities. (Roughly translated as “upward strength,” the title is a call once shouted by Portuguese fishermen as they pulled their boats up onto the sand.) Filmed in Póvoa do Varzim, it is a love story set against the backdrop of two clashing families. Deftly combining fiction and documentary sequences and using a large cast of non-professional actors, the film was met with a sympathetic response from the Portuguese press, who praised it for its cinematography and accurate representation of the community. Ala-Arriba! was presented at the Venice Film Festival, where it won a Biennale Award.
The Cinemateca Portuguesa holds three nitrate prints of this film, as well as the original camera and optical sound negatives. The negatives were transferred to the Cinemateca from a Lisbon film laboratory in 1974 and were photochemically preserved by Cinemateca in 1982 and again in 2025. All the nitrate prints were struck from the original negatives and use Kodak film stock dating from 1941 to 1943. The circumstances of the incorporation of these prints are undocumented, although one was listed in the archive’s oldest inventory, dating from 1959, and is likely to have been purchased by the Cinemateca directly from the producer. The print selected for NPS is the most complete in Cinemateca’s collection, with a length of 7,917 feet, 33 splices, and a shrinkage range of 1.3%–1.5%.
– Tiago Baptista
This screening is free for passholders of the sold-out 10th Nitrate Picture Show. A limited number of single-screening tickets may be available for purchase in person at the Dryden Theatre box office on a rush-line basis. Rush tickets will be sold only if seats remain after the film’s spoken introduction has begun.