WALTER HUGO KHOURI’S VOYEURISTIC GAMES WITH HIS AUDIENCE IN NOITE VAZIA
WALTER HUGO KHOURI’S VOYEURISTIC GAMES WITH HIS AUDIENCE IN NOITE VAZIA

Summary/Abstract: This paper offers an analysis of Walter Hugo Khouri’s most acclaimed but also most controversial 􀂿 lm, Noite Vazia (Men and Women, 1964). The author of the paper discusses Noite Vazia in the context of the 1950/60s economic boom in Brazil. Against this background, Khouri’s film is examined as an original and far-sighted challenge to the state-ideology which boasted ‘ fifty years progress in five’ and regarded cinema as a means of promoting social progress. A close analysis of Noite Vazia reveals Khouri’s rejection of such a restrictive cinematographic agenda. The film features an intricate game of looks and glances in which both Khouri’s characters, the silent city and also his audience become engaged. Outreaching the bounds of the politicallyapproved line of thinking, Khouri stages a daring comment on the role of the cinema, and on the universality and persistence of such traits of human nature as voyeurism and lustiness

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