The opening Kubrick Stare shot.
Limite is a 1931 film from Brazil, directed by Mario Peixoto.
It is an avant-garde film that sort of has a story, although what it is, is not exactly clear. As the film opens, three people are adrift at sea in an open boat. Woman #1 has a little bit of life in her; she sits in the bow of the boat as if she's looking for something, and she doles out some of their very small store of food to the others. At one point she attempts to row. The man and woman #2, on the other hand, lay about the boat listlessly as if they are only waiting to die.
The stories of the three characters are told out in a series of flashbacks. Woman 1 was married to a movie theater pianist. After coming home from the market and finding him passed out on the stairs drunk, she walked out of her marriage. Woman 2 is a convict, who escaped from jail with the help of a guard, and found work as a seamstress. The man seems to have had an affair with another man's wife, some time after his own wife died.
Many things are left unexplained, like why the man is yelling at nobody after having an unpleasant encounter in a graveyard, or, for that matter, why the three people are adrift in a rowboat in the first place.
Tropes:
- Between My Legs: The mysterious encounter between Man 1 and the fruit-eating woman on the pier ends with a shot from between Man 1's legs of the woman walking away.
- Blade-of-Grass Cut: Many, like a closeup of a dandelion, or the closeup of the tall grass by the pond where Man 1 and his lover go wading.
- Book Ends: The opening shots, of birds sitting on a rock followed by the strange image of a woman looking at the camera while a man holds handcuffed wrists under her chin, are repeated as the last shots of the movie.
- Creator Cameo: Mario Peixoto appears in one scene as the man in the cemetery, sitting at the grave of Man 1's wife. He's there lying in wait for Man 1, the man who is having sex with his wife. After confronting Man 1 the man in the cemetery drops a bomb: his wife has leprosy.
- Downer Beginning: Opens with three people adrift at sea, in a rowboat, with two of them seemingly near death.
- How We Got Here: Sort of. The film is structured in How We Got Here style, with shots of the three people in the boat being interspersed with long flashbacks that tell their stories. However, technically it does not actually explain how they got there. Why are they in a boat together?
- Kubrick Stare: The opening image features a woman giving a Kubrick Stare to the camera while a man behind her holds out handcuffed wrists under her chin.
- Leave the Camera Running: There are several instances of static shots where the film rolls and nothing happens. Shots of tall grass, shots of random buildings in the harbor, shots of a dead tree. Near the end there is a ten-minute segment that is nothing but crashing waves and surf.
- Match Cut:
- There's a match cut from a spinning train wheel to a spinning wheel of a sewing machine, demonstrating that Woman 2 has made good her escape and is working as a seamstress somewhere.
- Another match cut goes from the spindly branches of a tree, to a utility pole with a bunch of electric lines.
- Mind Screw: There's sort of a story, as the flashbacks explain about the lives of the three people in the boat, but much remains unclear. Why are they in the boat? Who was Man 1 yelling at after he left the cemetery? What is the significance of the scene where Man 1 wanders down to a dock, only to meet a coyly smiling young woman eating a piece of fruit? What was the point of the series of extreme closeups of people's mouths laughing as they watch a Charlie Chaplin movie?
- Motif: Many, many shots of the three characters walking. Many shots of the three characters walking that only show their lower legs and feet, as well as other shots focusing on feet, like the scene where Man 1 is bidding goodbye to the other man's wife.
- Nameless Narrative: As might be expected with a silent film that has no dialogue.
- Painting the Medium: The flashback scene with Woman 2 walking away from the prison cuts to a shot of the actual exposed film of the movie, held in front of the camera, before the next scene shows the woman working as a seamstress.
- Repeat Cut
- For no obvious reason, there are several Repeat Cuts, combined with dramatic zooms, onto a drinking fountain that is spurting water in an open square.
- Another mysterious repeat cut involves several cuts of Man 1 yelling out at...no one, apparently, immediately after meeting the other man in the cemetery.
- Shout-Out: Woman 1's husband works as a pianist in a movie theater, this being a job that people did during the silent movie era. It has nothing at all to do with the story, especially since Woman 1 has already walked out on her husband, but it does provide a reason for the film to show the movie theater audience watching Charlie Chaplin in The Adventurer.
- Silence Is Golden: It's a silent movie. Not only that, there are only two bits of expository information: a newspaper article revealing that Woman 2 is an escaped convict, and a few lines of dialogue from the man at the cemetery, revealing that Man 1 is having an affair with his wife—who has leprosy.
- Staggered Zoom: There's a staggered zoom onto Woman 1 sitting on a promontory that looks over the harbor, as she has a moment of crisis after finding her husband passed out drunk in public.
- Wedding Ring Removal: The man sitting in the cemetery takes his wedding ring off. This is soon followed by the film revealing that the man in the cemetery is the husband of the woman Man 1 is sleeping with.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The three people in the boat spot a black object bobbing in the water nearby. Man 1 dives in the water to investigate—Woman 2 grabs his arm to stop him but he dives in anyway. What was the black thing in the water? What happened to the man? The man is never seen again, nor is Woman 2; after a 10-minute montage of crashing waves, the film ends with the boat having disappeared and Woman 1 desperately clutching to a piece of debris.
