Gebo and the Shadow: Cinematographical Theatre “From Raul Brandão's theatre to Manoel de Oliveira's cinema”

Abstract

In the present work our aim is to approach an intermedial relationship between Raul Brandão's play Gebo and the shadow, published in 1923, and it's adaptation to the cinema by Manoel de Oliveira, made  almost one hundred years later, in 2012. We hope our approach becomes a meditation about the contemplative/speculative character (static if we think in terms of movement) of the image in both authors. We have a play composed by theatrical images whose immobility refers to a more speculative and contemplative rather than dramatic theatre. The adaptation of Gebo and the Shadow respects this apparent immobility, not only because Oliveira's filmmaking practice tends to the static, long, reflective shot, but because the work of Raul Brandão seems to meet in the cinema of Manoel de Oliveira an equivalent in what we can call the conception of the image as reflection.

reflection.