The Red Light Bandit

There are two different types of crime film. The first type is the most popular. It’s a kind of daydream, to imagine ditching your boring 9-to-5 job and live the life of a criminal. You answer to no one. And if someone questions you, well, they’re gonna wish they hadn’t. Movies like Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless or Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde exemplify this fantasy. At the end, the protagonists must pay for their crimes, because there needs to be some sort of moral (crime doesn’t pay), but until that violent end, they’re our surrogate and we’re living vicariously through them.

Then, there are movies like The Red Light Bandit, which show us a depiction of a very real murderer. There’s nothing romantic about Jorge (Paulo Villaça), the titular Red Light Bandit. Hell, you wouldn’t even want to spend ten minutes in the same room as the guy, never mind living out an entire story through his eyes. He’s repulsive. He picks his nose at the movies. He whistles too much. He chews with his mouth open and breathes through a stuffed nose so crumbs go flying everywhere.

Oh, yeah. And he’s a thief, rapist and a murderer.

As a movie-going audience, we’ve learned to accept certain flaws from characters, and being scumbags is something we can accept. But it’s only palatable if the character is magnetic. Scareface’s Tony Montana is a power-hungry coke addict with an insatiable appetite and lust for money, but he has more memorable one-liners I can keep track of. Goodfellas’ Tommy DeVito is a sociopath on his best day and a psychopath on his worst, but he’s one of the most watchable characters of any movie you’re ever going to see.

Director Rogério Sganzerla decides to do away with this notion and let the character be as unlikable—and realistic—as possible. A bold choice, which makes a powerful statement on its own. I think Sganzerla realizes how painful of a film it would be to simply spend 90 minutes with Jorge, so he jazzes up the narrative with a sensationalistic narrative from the perspective of blood-thirsty media and rapid whip-cuts and edits. Thematically, The Red Light Bandit feels more akin to films like Man Bites Dog or Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

The film frequently breaks from Jorge to show the larger world affected by his crimes. There’s a police investigation we peer into occasionally and a politician using the murders to his advantage. Showing us how the city is responding (and sometimes profiting) off of his crime spree makes his carnage even more revolting, somehow.

The Red Light Bandit is the most famous of the Cinema Marginal films from Brazil and is considered one of the most important films in Brazil’s history, period. Cinema Marginal was a rejection of the Cinema Novo movement and embraced a rougher, more experimental nature. The film’s jerky, fast-paced and nontraditional narrative may put off some viewers, but those willing to wait it out until the end, they’re going to be in for a treat to see how it all comes together.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
The Red Light Bandit arrives on Blu-ray from Severin in a single region-free disc that contains the feature and all supplemental features. The disc comes housed in a standard case with a slipcover that adorns art from HauntLove.

I assume there were probably endless meetings about to which extent to restore The Red Light Bandit. Severin’s release in 1080p HD, which was completed from a new 2K scan of the original camera negative, is speckled with dirt and grit. There's a genuine grittiness to it that feels lived-in and rich, like the film itself has been through a lot over the years and we, the audience, want to feel those years.

The visual presentation is not obnoxious in its roughness, it suits it well. A movie like this, which sort of toes the line between exploitative grindhouse picture and pseudo cinéma verité documentary-style realism, wouldn’t pack the same punch with cleaned-up video, pristine in its presentation. While I’m sure it would be possible to have done that, Severin made the right choice in splitting the difference. The final product is true to the film’s nitty-gritty aesthetic, while the images beneath the dirt and grit and lines of age and distress are crystal clear, bright, and quite striking in how amazing they look.

The Red Light Bandit comes with a Portuguese monaural sound mix encoded in DTS-HD MA. The audio here isn’t bad at all. Sound effects come through strong, like gunshots, screeching car tires, etc., without being overpowering, and dialogue always comes through strong and favored. The musical score and occasional needle drop from some popular American rock musician like Jimi Hendrix knows how to take center stage without stealing the whole show. Dialogue can sometimes come through a little muffled on the edges, which is clearly due to recording equipment available at the time, for such a limited budget. This isn’t a dig, just an observation and fair warning to anyone expecting a more modern sound design. Like the video presentation, this audio mix is very faithful to the film in its original form.

Severin provides viewers with a pair of interviews that go into the production history of The Red Light Bandit and the cinema marginal movement as a whole. There are also a pair of short films from the era, too, including one by The Red Light Bandit director himself Rogério Sganzerla.

• Cinema Marginal (HD 31:18) – Interview with producer and film conservationist Paulo Sacramento
• The Anti-Muse (HD 24:35) – Interview with actress Helena Ignez
• Trailer
• Short Films:
• Comics by Rogério Sganzerla (HD 10:11)
• Horror Palace Hotel by Jairo Ferreira (HD 40:43)
• Introduction to Horror Palace Hotel by Filmmaker Dennison Ramalho (HD 5:32)

Severin issues a quality Blu-ray release for The Red Light Bandit, an important work in Brazilian film. Audio and video quality are rough, intentionally so, as an aesthetical choice that suits the narrative well. And special features do a great job at deepening viewers’ understanding of the film and the role it played in an experimental movement in a time and place noted for embracing experimental storytelling techniques. The Red Light Bandit comes Highly Recommended.