During the 1940s, Vinicius actively involved in a controversy with Ribeiro Couto in the newspapers. The theme was the end of silent films, defended by Vinicius, in favor of the talkies. In 1946, he moves to Los Angeles and lives in the city for a long period of diplomatic life. Meanwhile, he meets the acclaimed names of Hollywood and has a close relationship with Brazilians as Carmen Miranda and Aloysio de Oliveira. Vinicius even begins his studies of cinema in 1947 with Orson Welles, besides releasing internationally the “Film” magazine, with the then young Brazilian critic Alex Viany.
In the next decade, he continues practicing the occupation as a critic in newspapers as “Última Hora.” He starts participating in juries at international festivals, and in 1952, he covers the major festivals in Europe. In 1959, the French film adaptation of his play “Orfeu Negro” (Black Orpheus), with his own original screenplay, wins the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Already in the following decade, he debuts as a director on a documentary ordered by the Ministry of Education and Culture, dedicated to the building named Capanema and the tiles of his friend Candido Portinari. It is a documentary that, unfortunately, disappears in the archives of the state bureaucracy. In 1965, he engages in a new cinematographic foray, now working with the carioca filmmaker Leon Hirzsman on the script of “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl from Ipanema), a film which would be released with no great success in 1967.
In fact, most of Vinicius’s experiences in films resulted in inconclusive and interrupted plans. “Aleijadinho”, a documentary ordered by Alberto Cavalcanti in 1952, “Arrastão”, an adaptation of the legend of "Tristan and Isolde" in Brazilian soil and “Polichinelo”, a written script but at no time recorded, from 1974, are just three examples of many other cinematographic plans which have never been accomplished . Even so, the critical fortune Vinicius left us on the cinema of his time, present in the texts of this section of the website, becomes another valuable document of the Brazilian cultural history in the twentieth century.
Cinema Chronicles
In 1941, he begins to write reviews on the subject for the newspaper “A Manhã”( The Morning). From then on, his relationship with the film market involved almost all sectors. Besides being a critic, Vinicius was a producer, a screenwriter, a deputy, a president of festivals of national and international cinema, na author of soundtracks and a character of documentaries.
