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Widely considered the founding text of the New Portuguese Cinema, Paulo Rocha’s dynamic coming-of-age film, The Green Years, reflected a new attitude in the wake of post-Salazar modernization of urban life in the 1960s. Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappings of modern life.
Shooting in gorgeous black-and-white, Rocha subverts melodramatic conventions by avoiding easy psychology or clearly defined goals, and favors mise-en-scène over narrative, reflecting a country at odds with its national character. Winner of Best First Film at the 1964 Locarno Film Festival, Rocha’s extraordinary debut is receiving its long-awaited U.S. release in a luminous 4K restoration supervised by celebrated Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (Vitalina Varela).
Director Paulo Rocha | 1964 | In Portuguese with English subtitles | 91 minutes | NR
