Carnaval and the Chanchada

The chanchada is a uniquely Brazilian genre popular from the 1930s through the 1950s. Developed in the 1930s as sound technology advanced and the Great Depression cleaved an opening in the global cinema market, the genre blended the tropes of the Hollywood musical with the music and celebrities of Rio’s carnival. It appealed to audiences craving to put faces to the voices they heard over the radio and cultivated a culto al estrelismo around still iconic figures like Carmen Miranda.

In Alô, alô, Carnaval (1935), Miranda plays an up and coming radio star involved in the production of a revue show staged in an upscale Rio casino.

Like many early chanchada filmes, Alô, alô, Carnaval was a co-production between the Brazilian studio Cinédia and the American producer Wallace Downey. In the 1940s, the studio Atlântida rose to prominence in the genre. The 1949 film Carnaval no fogo is considered paradigmatic of the films produced by this studio throughout the 1940s and 50s.

Starring the comedic duo Oscarito and Grande Otelo, the film plays with the classic carnival themes of inversions and changes in identity. Scholars like Roberto DaMatta have examined Carnaval as a rite of passage, a lá Levi-Strauss. His 1973 book Ensaios de antropología cultural , a review of which is available here, uses films and songs like “A noite dos mascarados” as a point of departure for his analysis.