PORTO’S CINEMATICS: THE CITY THROUGH THE LENS OF MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA

PORTO’S CINEMATICS: THE CITY THROUGH THE LENS OF MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA

I always filmed Porto, not to show what is immediately visible, but to listen to what remains unsaid. This city is, to me, more than streets, stones, or mist. It is a memory in motion, an ancient breath, made of centuries. Perhaps that’s why I never stopped filming it: because it, like cinema, contains within it the mystery of time.

 

A city that reveals itself slowly

Filming Porto is like returning to a home where every object has its own story. When I made Douro, Faina Fluvial in 1931, I tried to capture human labor and the pulse of the river, that rhythm between effort and current. I didn’t want to beautify, but to reveal. The riverside area, with its dockworkers and its almost choreographic rhythm, was the first place where I understood that the city is living matter. And that cinema has the duty to listen to it.

Later, with Aniki-Bobó, I returned to the same place, but from a different angle: that of childhood. Filming those poor children running through the streets of Ribeira, between small transgressions and deep silences, was to find, in everyday life, the poetry that reality so often hides. In that film, the city is not just a backdrop. It is a strict teacher, a silent witness to the human condition.

And in Porto da Minha Infância, already at the dusk of the century and of life, I returned to the youth memories. I walked with the camera through the places that shaped me, trying not so much to reconstruct them, but to evoke what remains when everything else changes: the smell of a house, the sound of a hallway, the light on faces long gone. It was more than a documentary, it was a confession. A reencounter between the man and the city that saw him grow.

Slowness as a form of respect

People always told me my films were slow. Perhaps they are. But so is Porto. This city does not reveal itself to those who rush. To understand it, one must climb the old stairs slowly, stop at the corner where the light sketches the granite, linger by the Douro’s edge without asking how long until the next shot.

Each of my films was an effort not to betray the internal rhythm of the city. A dense time, where stories are not immediately revealed, they settle. Porto has that wisdom. It lets everything mature, even what seems already finished.

 

A city that continues to project itself

Today, even far from the cameras, I know Porto still offers images to those who know how to look. The rooftops, the reflections in the river, the simple gestures, all still beats with the same intensity that once moved me. But one must be willing to look as one watches one of my films: with attention, with patience, with love for what remains out of focus.

And there are still places where the city breathes with that same rhythm. Not many. But they exist. Spaces where noise gives way to murmur, where time slows down and invites contemplation. One of them is the Vila Foz Hotel & Spa. There, by the Atlantic, Porto seems to whisper softly, like in the dense pauses of one of my dialogues. The sea, the serene architecture, the light through the windows, everything there arranges itself like a well-composed shot. I don’t know if it’s cinema. But it is, without a doubt, a way of seeing.

To see is an art. To film it, a form of love. Porto taught me both. And that is why I still feel it, even with my eyes closed.