Estranho Encontro (1958)

4
(13)

Tormented and scared girl escapes from being hit at night on a barren road. The driver rescues and shelters her in a mansion belonging to his mistress. He discovers that she is running away from a psychotic husband, and due to the gracious assistance, falls madly in love with her. When the caretaker of the mansion discovers a ransom offered for who find the young woman, he tells her whereabouts to the husband, who ruthlessly pursues their victim.

Director: Walter Hugo Khouri.
Stars: Mário Sérgio, Andrea Bayard, Lola Brah, Luigi Picchi, Sérgio Hingst.

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2 Comments

  1. April 14, 2020
    Reply

    This early work of Brazilian writer/director Walter Hugo Khouri is visually startling but suffers from a slight torpor – and at times creaky music.
    Indebted visually to Film Noir of the 40’s and psychologically, to early Bergman, certain sequences with the 30s music and the stalking figures suggest horror films of that earlier decade. Perhaps Khouri was still processing his influences? There’s also Jacques Tourneur to consider . . .
    To my mind his greatest film, or the best I’ve seen, is Noite Vazia (1964 English title: Men and Women, or, Empty Night), which is often compared to Antonioni’s “alienation trilogy” – though I think the final interest of Noite Vazia remains invested in the people, rather than in the more metaphysical level of alienation explored by Antonioni perhaps?
    Khouri’s films often involve a triangle of protagonists separated from the world in big houses. This recurs in another fascinating film of his from 1972: The Goddesses. see:
    https://rarelust.com/the-goddesses-1972/#more-63898 The landscape setting here is very similar to Estranho Encontro, but the house much more distinctive – and arguably this house is the main character of the film – as if by this point Khouri was also diverging into the more abstract? But the other aspect dominating The Goddesses, possibly a result of the relaxation of censorship, possibly just because it was a fashion of the times, was the film’s eroticism, a quality which came to takeover and sabotage his later films – or at least those I’ve managed to see.

    I’m not aware of any of Khouri’s films being commercially available with English subtitles, so that admirers are entirely dependent on such valuable sites as Rarefilmm. Thanks yet again!!
    By the Way, Noite Vazia is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CajORmdL93s but not being very adept technically, I’ve been forced to watch it on the computer – otherwise the subtitles disappear.

  2. April 14, 2020
    Reply

    This early work of Brazilian writer/director Walter Hugo Khouri is visually startling but suffers from a slight torpor – and at times creaky music.
    Indebted visually to Film Noir of the 40’s and psychologically, to early Bergman, certain sequences with the 30s music and the stalking figures suggest horror films of that earlier decade. Perhaps Khouri was still processing his influences? There’s also Jacques Tourneur to consider . . .
    To my mind his greatest film, or the best I’ve seen, is Noite Vazia (1964 English title: Men and Women, or, Empty Night), which is often compared to Antonioni’s “alienation trilogy” – though I think the final interest of Noite Vazia remains invested in the people, rather than in the more metaphysical level of alienation explored by Antonioni perhaps?
    Khouri’s films often involve a triangle of protagonists separated from the world in big houses. This recurs in another fascinating film of his from 1972: The Goddesses. see:
    https://rarelust.com/the-goddesses-1972/#more-63898 The landscape setting here is very similar to Estranho Encontro, but the house much more distinctive – and arguably this house is the main character of the film – as if by this point Khouri was also diverging into the more abstract? But the other aspect dominating The Goddesses, possibly a result of the relaxation of censorship, possibly just because it was a fashion of the times, was the film’s eroticism, a quality which came to takeover and sabotage his later films – or at least those I’ve managed to see.

    I’m not aware of any of Khouri’s films being commercially available with English subtitles, so that admirers are entirely dependent on such valuable sites as Rarefilmm. Thanks yet again!!
    By the Way, Noite Vazia is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CajORmdL93s but not being very adept technically, I’ve been forced to watch it on the computer – otherwise the subtitles disappear.

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