Guilherme Rogato's only surviving short film "Casamento é Negócio?" ("Marriage is Business?") was a little ahead of its time by breaking down
the typical fairytale convention of romantic movies where love conquers all and tell things as they are, that money changes everything. It doesn't
work as comedy - not sure if it was supposed to be even though at times it gives such impression - but it certainly works as a dramatic study of social
relations and social conventions, a true then and a somewhat frequent thing now. Certainly we changed a great deal from the typical ideal of young girls
wanting to marry for financial matters than the matters from the heart, but there's always some cases here and there.
The movie tells the story of a girl torn apart for the love and attention of two men she happened to meet at that same time in her life. One is wealthy,
has a car and everything while the other is of more humble means who's trying to break out into the big business of oil. Both propose to her immediately and
that might be the humored bit. Strangely enough we don't see much of the rich guy except for some dates, the major focus is the poor guy and his talks with
his family where he keeps dreaming and planning about investing on oil and that's curious to notice that somehow everybody laughs at the guy saying that
petroleum was a failed product, a risky business - remember that the automobile industry was flourishing here and oil company Petrobrás wasn't even founded,
it was a new enterprise and as it shown here a couple of guys end up discovering oil, which could help the young man in getting a fortune.
The story is a little obvious but always entertaining. There are a couple of impressive shots and some nice technical aspects - the boat trip has
some uncharacteristic movements, rare for that early period of Brazilian cinema where most shots were static. It's a pity that the film isn't so well
preserved, there's plenty of grainy images and at times some of the title cards with the characters quotes and actions cannot be fully read. It doesn't
ruin completely the understanding of the story, it just makes it a little confusing since there's something missing. Some fun trivia: the main cast
are formed by non professional actors, they're all local people from Recife (one of the very first productions to be filmed there) and they're quite
good in their roles even though the camera work doesn't offer them close-up shots, it's all very distant. It feels genuine. A small precious gem from early
Brazilian cinema that needs to be rediscovered. 9/10.