Hour of the Star (Portuguese: A Hora da Estrela) is a Brazilian film directed by Suzana Amaral and released in 1985. The film is an adaptation of a book by Clarice Lispector with the same name. In 1986, the actress Marcélia Cartaxo won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, for her role as Macabea.
"Macabea is an example of the mental undevelopment of the poor people of the world," the director, Amaral, has written. "Facing the solitude of the big city, she possesses the emptiness of someone who does not have the means to be cultured." But surely her case is even more extreme than that. Macabea doesn't even possess the culture of poverty; she is simply an emptiness.
The film is reviewed in Pauline Kael's ninth collection of movie reviews, Hooked, where she praises it, and particularly the performance of Marcelia Cartaxo. The film gets to you, " and the image of Marcelia Cartaxo's Macabea is what does it - the terrible aloneness of this mass woman, this nothing of a woman whom you wouldn't notice on the street. Umberto D stood for all the proud, angry old people who couldn't live on their pensions, but he was himself too - his own ornery old man. Macabea is most herself in her moments of contentment: she smiles serenely as she celebrates her Sunday by taking a ride in the subway. It's the director's triumph that this girl gets away from her. Numbed as she is, she's as alive as Amaral or you or I, and more mysteriously so."
Read more about Hour Of The Star: Cast
Famous quotes containing the words star and/or hour:
“Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures Melancholy give,
And I with thee will choose to live.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“‘Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more ‘twill be eleven,
And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)