Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6517 in VHS
• Released on: 2000-06-27
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Color, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: Portuguese
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 127 minutes

Amazon.com
Hector Babenco, who went on to direct the acclaimed Kiss of the Spiderwoman, made an international splash with this gritty portrait of juvenile poverty and street crime in Brazil. Pixote (Portuguese slang for "Peewee") is the name of a chubby-cheeked 10-year-old runaway played by real-life slum kid Fernando Ramos da Silva. He's a natural, creating a childlike and vulnerable character left emotionally hardened and morally adrift by his brutal experiences. In an overcrowded São Paulo "reform school," a cross between a prison and an army barracks, he learns the hard facts of survival as he watches gangs prey on weaker kids, and the cops and guards abuse, beat, and even murder their charges. Pixote escapes and turns to street crime in Rio with a small gang, but his dreams of big money and a good life are dashed as they play at crime in a violent kill-or-be-killed world. Equal parts exposé and social drama, Pixote dramatizes the plight of millions of children who live on the streets or get ground up in the system that breeds hardened criminals from juvenile delinquents. Like Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados, one of Babenco's inspirations, this occasionally melodramatic portrait of poverty is shocking and affecting, but no more so than da Silva's own life story. After completing the film he sank back into poverty and crime, and died on the streets. His life became the subject of the 1996 film Who Killed Pixote?, which showed that despite the outcry created by Pixote, Brazil has done little to alleviate these conditions. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Hauntingly Infective
I saw this film in the theater as a first release movie and still remember its disturbing images to this day. While most movies show the innocent dream world we like to think children live in, Pixote slithers and crawls through a dark and surreal world unknown to most of us -- yet it is a world with recondite beauty because Pixote knows no other. We see things happen that would be totally unacceptable in the antiseptic world of civilization but our little protagonists does not seem to see his world as anything but normal. With the self-survival morals of any jungle animal, he goes about his day-to-day life. And this juxtaposing of morals leads to a little bit of an internal conflict with the viewer before the end of the movie. I highly recommend this film to anyone but would warn you that if the "Pollyanna" world of children is what you think exists and want to see, this film with keep you awake for quiet a few nights.

Powerful insight!!
This is perhaps one of the most accurate depictions of life on the streets for millions of homeless, and parentless, children around the world. Vivid. Hard-hitting. Certainly not for the weak of stomach. Pixote tells the straight story of a young child's search for "familia", security and the realization of every child's dream for opportunity...... and of the sex, drugs, loneliness, violence and brutality that he finds instead in the streets. A great learning tool for students, social workers, law enforcement and those in the ministry: you will NEVER view street children the same after watching this. (...)

Acclaimed social drama isn't for everyone
Despite arriving on DVD trailing garlands of praise from its theatrical exposure, Hector Babenco's third feature "Pixote The Survival of the Weakest" (Pixote A Lei do Mais Fraco, 1981) provides a harrowing and squalid glimpse into an alien culture beset by an all-consuming poverty. Chronicling the life and crimes of ten-year-old homeless boy Pixote (pronounced 'Pi-chott' or 'Pi-chott-ay', and played with remarkable sincerity by non-professional actor Fernando Ramos da Silva) in the slums of Sao Paulo, it follows him down the path of petty thievery to his brief stay in a reformatory where violence is a way of life, to his eventual escape and descent into murder. The only shafts of light are provided by his friends, fellow outcasts whose attempts to rise above their appalling circumstances are almost inevitably doomed to failure, and by an alcoholic prostitute (the luminous Marilia Pera) who unwittingly precipitates their downfall. In the end, only one of the characters emerges from the debris, returning to the slums where life - such as it is - goes on much the same as before. It isn't a pretty picture, nor can it ever be.

Though depressing and unlikeable, "Pixote..." is virtually critic-proof. Based on a novel by Jose Louzeiro, Babenco's film offers an outraged response to the crushing hardships suffered by millions of homeless street kids in Sao Paulo who turn to crime to sustain themselves and are exploited by criminal gangs because of a loophole in Brazilian law which forbids the prosecution of minors. Most scandalous of all are the corrupt police officers who participate in the murder of countless street children every year, treating it as a form of 'pest control'. If nothing else, "Pixote..." refuses to flinch from the reality of these terrible circumstances, depicting rape, murder, glue-sniffing and robbery with an uncompromising level of detail. However, those seeking exploitation are advised to look elsewhere - these events are outlined against a backdrop of misery and ruined aspirations, in a crumbling landscape where even the smallest flicker of hope can be cruelly extinguished at any given moment. Worse still, despite the film's campaigning nature and its international theatrical success, these conditions still exist in Brazil today, and Ramos da Silva - whose social standing mirrored that of the character he played - ultimately succumbed to its worst excesses: Unable to escape the bonds of poverty which prevented him from realizing his dreams, he turned to crime and was murdered in 1987, allegedly by local police. His life and death was subsequently dramatized by director Jose Joffily in "Who Killed Pixote?" (Quem Matou Pixote?, 1996).

Whatever you think of the film, New Yorker's region 1 DVD (which runs 127m 34s) is a huge disappointment. The tatty-looking print and crackly soundtrack (two-channel mono) could be forgiven, but this 1.85:1 movie has been transferred in full-screen format only, resulting in quite a bit of panning-and-scanning and a number of cuts from one side of the image to the other, to accommodate two or more characters speaking to one another from opposite sides of the screen (cf. the brief sequence at 1:14:52, for example). In fact, the cropping is absolutely horrendous! This may have been the only print available to New Yorker, but it's difficult to recommend such a cramped and ugly-looking presentation to anyone. The optional English subtitles are excellent, however.