Ugo Giorgetti's "Rua São Bento, 405" is a lot more than an important and special cultural point of São Paulo's downtown, the heart of the city: it reveals about what is
located on that street, the Martinelli building, Brazil's first skyscraper and one of the tallest ones in South America for a long time - it has been surpassed over
the years but still remains as one of the most fascinating and most beautiful cultural buildings in São Paulo. It's architecture is jawwdropping considering its time.
However, Giorgetti's film is more about a downer phase of the place than its huge importance when of its construction in the 1930's.
One of its owners/designers Ítalo Martinelli briefly appears to reflect about the buildings real intention as having a commercial/banks and stuff and
also as the Martinelli's family residence at the very top - and even included other tenants who had some form of high means to live there. But came the 1970's
and the city infrastruture and economical crisis forced the government to take over the building and evict its tenants - and by that time, the place wasn't
occupied by the wealthy industrials and the banks of São Paulo; they moved to higher and better places. Who stayed there then? It only had people who barely had means to be there but somehow they got there, one can almost
say Martinelli building has become a place that was invaded. We have the time to see those folks share their stories, their ways of means without having a
proper care since the location was at its worst level.
I don't have much of an opinion on why one should see this movie or not except for curious facts about São Paulo's decade and the poor level that cultural
landmark got to; but as an update: the place is still there, it can be visited by anyone during exhibits sponsored by a bank so you go all the way to the top
and the see the whole landscape of the city downtown from Paulista Avenue spots to the Sé Square and other places (I used to work near the building, right
around the corner but as of 2019, I still haven't find the time to go all the way up...and that's a thrilling view as I could glimpse from a magazine some
years ago since it was recently re-opened. It went through some hard times, it took some private investments to save it from being another important place that
went downhill (the most famous example here was a huge apartment complex nicknamed Treme Treme, along the line of "Shake Shake", which was so poorly cared over the
years that city hall decided to take it down and demolish for good).
Giorgetti is probably the most significant directors to capture São Paulo and its places either doing documentaries or feature films such as "Sábado".
He covers with detail the façades of the building and its then decadent interiors. For the curious of hearts in seeing a special location of the city, even though
it wasn't on its best ways. 7/10