The history of Brazilian cinema is almost as old as the birth of the medium itself. Existing largely as an individualistic enterprise for the first half of the 20th century, Brazil eventually experimented with a Hollywood-like productions in the late 40s and early 50s through studios like Atlântida Cinematográfica and the Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz. Then, as in the United States, Brazilian filmmakers came to resent the overtly commercial nature of the studio system, and by the early 60s followed the wave of intellectual film movements in France and Italy with its own intellectual movement, referred to as Cinema Novo. The new 60s cinema of Brazil was quickly torn between two extremes: the unpopular but passionate works of the Brazilian intelligentsia and the low-budget productions of independent filmmakers, often produced with the aid of theaters required by law to fill theaters with a set number of Brazilian-produced films. José Mojica Marins’ grisly, exploitative film At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, released in 1964 to great commercial success, belongs to the latter camp. Though produced for almost nothing, employing amateur actors and eschewing external sources of financial aid, the film not only created Brazil’s most enduring horror character, Zé do Caixão (or Coffin Joe to U.S. audiences), but is also recognized as the first Brazilian horror ever made.
The film opens with Zé do Caixão directly facing the camera, ranting, as he will many times throughout the film, about the purity of physical mortality and his desire to be materially reproduced by conceiving an heir. He spends the film pursuing this goal, murdering anyone who gets between him and the woman he desires and mocking those who call attention to his immorality. After the opening credits roll, his declaration is immediately rebuked by a fortune-teller who threatens the audience and warns them away from watching the film, quickly condemning Zé do Caixão’s pursuits as sinful. At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul immediately frames itself as the ideological battle between these two figures, the first embodying chaotic atheism and the second embodying superstition and ambivalent, otherworldly menace.
What is fascinating about Zé do Caixão, and Mojica Marins’ conception of the character, who he plays here and across a variety of media to this day, is how his inherent villainy is attributable directly to his atheism, yet is never framed against a particularly stable notion of Christianity. While both he and the fortune-teller address the audience individually at the beginning, it’s not long before their paths cross in the narrative, as she warns Zé do Caixão repeatedly of the sins of his actions. Her words come to haunt him as he is driven mad in the cemetery he oversees, convinced the ghosts of those he has killed have returned from the dead to haunt him.
Frequently framed ironically against the religious imagery of the graveyard, Zé do Caixão is cast in the darkness; oftentimes his face is the only part of him that can be easily determined in the frame. The final graveyard scene, in which ghosts cross over to torment the murderer, refuses to place him in the same frame or ever ground the ghosts in the physical space of the graveyard, employing a negative filter to give the ghosts an otherworldly quality. The haunting of Zé do Caixão is unheroic, un-Christian, even. He is a mere mortal, up against spiritual, vengeful forces he cannot comprehend. The separation of him from the ghosts through contrasting framing also allows the film to question whether or not Zé do Caixão is merely hallucinating, driven mad by guilt and superstition he pretends not to possess. Mojica Marins employs a repeating close-up of the murderer’s eyes every time Zé do Caixão kills someone; the final shot of the dead man zooms in on his ravaged, widened eyes, leaving it unclear as to what he saw or did not see that led him to death. Was it God’s reckoning? Or something eminently more human, more psychological? At Midnight barely dwells on the question before ending, leaving it entirely up to audience speculation. It is a haunting, violent end for a violent, evil character.
There is tremendous craftsmanship in Mojica Marins’ seminal feature. Zé do Caixão’s violent actions ratchet up the speed of the editing, cutting mercifully away from his victims to emphasize his cold expression or to register the disgust of onlookers as he beats and menaces men in the village’s local tavern. Zé do Caixão’s actions are evil, and he is apathetic to their consequences in the moment – there is so often so little malice in his expression when he kills, and it makes him all the more terrifying. It becomes increasingly more unsettling how much time Mojica Marins spends with the character – he dominates nearly every scene of the film, many of which exist solely to let him scream at the sky or the graveyard or his friends who he later kills about the folly of religion, constantly justifying his actions to himself. There is a feeling that he must be endured that permeates the film, even as Mojica Marins’ performance bursts with charisma, Coffin Joe is still exhausting, and lecherous, and gross. His desires are sexual and gluttonous, and verbose. The subjective quality of At Midnight comes entirely from the onlookers’ willingness to spend 82 minutes with this creep.
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is a brilliantly rendered, if at times deeply off-putting, look at the mortal instability of faith and anti-faith, drawing no clear moral lines and exposing the weaknesses and ambivalence of moral and amoral actions. It is an excellent film, regardless of its bad production value and Zé do Caixão’s goofy costume (he wears not only a top hat and cape, bot Mojica Marins also grew out his fingernails to portray the character’s unintentionally hilarious claws), and certainly worthy of being the first Brazilian horror film.
Further Viewing:
O Cangaceiro (1953) – One of the most popular Brazilian films of all time, produced by Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz.
Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964) – One of the most revered works of Cinema Novo’s forefather, Glauber Rocha.
This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967) – the first of several sequels to At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul.
CAMERON FAIRCHILD | KXSU Art Reporter