From Propaganda to Attraction: Reassessing the Role of the Public in the Newsreel Jornal Português (1938–1951)

Abstract

The Jornal Português: Revista Mensal de Actualidades was a newsreel produced between 1938 and 1951 for the SPN/SNI, the main organ of propaganda of the Portuguese Estado Novo (1933–1974). It therefore offers a privileged view into the relationship between the cinematographic field and the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970), in its first years. Propaganda has, unsurprisingly, been the preferred angle of analysis, encouraging most scholars to treat these films as a vehicle of ideological indoctrination. The article argues that this approach relies (often unwittingly) on an outmoded concept of ‘mass communication’ that downplays the cinematic specificities of these films in two ways: by foregrounding government-led ‘hard topics’ to the detriment of ‘soft topics’, and by reducing onscreen images of the public to instances of political manipulation. I suggest, as an alternative, that we understand these topics and images within a ‘cinema of attractions’ framework, which acknowledges the central role the audience plays in the cinematic apparatus. In the absence of empirical work on these films’ reception, this kind of theoretical intervention enables us to recover the figure of the public in newsreels, and gain a better grasp of the Jornal Português as a filmic, rather than a journalistic, genre.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This article returns to and reinforces the data and analysis presented in Sofia Sampaio, ‘Cine-jornais, Público e Cinema de Atracções: Os Limites da Propaganda no Jornal Português (1938–1951)’, in A Propósito dos Outros Filmes: Encontros com o Arquivo de Imagens em Movimento, edited by Thaís Blank and Sofia Sampaio (Rio de Janeiro: forthcoming). I thank the editor and anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions, which enabled me to clarify my ideas and arguments.

2 The Jornal Português has been the subject of two master’s dissertations: Maria do Carmo Piçarra, Estado Novo e Propaganda no Cinema: O Jornal-Português de Actualidades (1938–1951) (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2002), and Ricardo F. Braga, Propaganda e Representação de um País nas Margens da Guerra: O Jornal Português (1938-1951) (Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 2005). The former was later published as two books: Salazar vai ao Cinema: O Jornal Português de Actualidades Filmadas (Coimbra: Minerva, 2006), and Salazar vai ao Cinema II: A ‘Política do Espírito’ no Jornal Português (Lisbon: DrellaDesign, 2011). Two doctoral theses have more recently (and more tangentially) approached it: Olivia Novoa Fernández, Noticiarios Enlatados: Del Rescate a la Literacía de las Imágenes Referentes a España en el Cine Informativo Portugués (Faro: Universidade do Algarve, 2019), and Ana Filipa Cerol Martins, Antes do filme, a Revolução: O Caso do Jornal Cinematográfico Nacional (1975-1977) (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 2020). Shorter studies will also be referenced.

3 See, for example, Jorge Ramos do Ó, Os Anos de Ferro. O Dispositivo Cultural Durante a ‘Política do Espírito’, 1933-1949 (Lisbon: Estampa, 1999); Daniel Melo, Salazarismo e Cultura Popular (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2001); and Vera Marques Alves, Arte Popular e Nação no Estado Novo. A Política Folclorista do Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2013).

4 See, for each case, Piçarra, Salazar Vai ao Cinema, and Braga, Propaganda e Representação, 5, 240.

5 Piçarra does recognise the ‘double nature (cinematographic and journalistic)’ of the Jornal Português but opts to approach it as a ‘journalistic genre’. See Salazar Vai ao Cinema II, 10–11. The outcome is, unsurprisingly, a negative assessment that focuses more on what the Jornal Português lacks and fails to be rather than on what it actually is. See also Salazar Vai ao Cinema, 150–153; 167; 168. All translations from the Spanish and Portuguese are mine.

6 E.g. Braga, Propaganda e Representação, 7.

7 My main reference has been Rafael Tranche and Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, NO-DO. El Tiempo y la Memoria, 8th ed. (Madrid: Cátedra/ Filmoteca Espanhola, 2006).

8 See María Florencia Luchetti, ‘El Noticiario Cinematográfico en Argentina. Un Estado de la Cuestión’, Aniki: Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento 3, no. 2 (2016): 303–333. I have employed Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ in my earlier research on Portuguese tourism films. See Sofia Sampaio, ‘Entre as Práticas Cinematográficas e as Práticas Turísticas: Um Olhar Etnográfico sobre a Produção de Filmes Turísticos Portugueses na Década de 1960’, Etnográfica 25, no. 1 (2021): 193–210.

9 Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, translated by Matthew Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 73. On the concept of ‘field of cultural production’, see also 140–149.

10 The impact of the journalistic field on newsreels must be assessed case by case. But one should bear in mind Rafael Tranche’s point that ‘the majority of newsreels were edited by film producers and not by news companies’. This was certainly the case with the Jornal Português. See Rafael Tranche, ‘Atracción, Actualidad y Noticiarios: La Información como Espectáculo’, in La construcció de l’Actualitat en el Cinema dels Orígens, ed. A. Quintana and J. Pons (Girona: Fundació Museu del Cinema/Ajuntament de Girona, 2012), 44.

11 For the former, see Marie-France Courriol, ‘Reception of War Propaganda in Fascist Italy: Second World War Fiction Films and Critical Audiences’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 1 (2015): 1–26, and the special issue on ‘Nazi Newsreels in German-Occupied Europe, 1939–1945’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 24, no. 1 (2004). For a review of these issues in communication and media studies, see David Morley, Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 41–53.

12 André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning jointly authored the term. I follow the highly productive media archaeology understanding of ‘cinema of attractions’ that applies it to other periods and practices of (and beyond) film history, in the footsteps of Wanda Strauven, The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), and Thomas Elsaesser, Film History as Media Archeology: Tracking Digital Cinema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016).

13 For a useful discussion of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ news, in newsreels, see Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, ‘El NO-DO y la Eficacia del Nacionalismo Banal’, in Imaginarios y Representaciones de España durante el Franquismo, ed. Stéphane Michonneau and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2014), 180.

14 This approach to the Jornal Português also tries to compensate for the lack of solid sources necessary to conduct a historically-based reception study on this newsreel. On the difficulties raised by this kind of study, see Jennifer Peterson, ‘“The Knowledge which comes in Pictures”: Educational films and early cinema audiences’, in A Companion to Early Cinema, ed. André Gaudreault, Nicolas Dulac and Santiago Hidalgo (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

15 Launched in December 2015, the edition consists of a box of 5 DVD (with a total of 1018 minutes) and a 76-page illustrated and bilingual (Portuguese and English) booklet. With the exception of issues 80 and 82, the Jornal Português has been fully preserved. See Tiago Baptista and Rui Machado, ‘About this edition’, in booklet of the DVD edition of the Jornal Português (Lisbon: Cinemateca Portuguesa–Museu do Cinema, 2015), 59. For a review of this edition, see Sofia Sampaio, ‘Jornal Português: Revista Mensal de Actualidades 1938-1951, Edições da Cinemateca Portuguesa–Museu do Cinema, 2015’, Análise Social 219, LI, no. 2 (2016): 467–472.

16 The SPN (Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional) was created in September 1933. It answered directly to the President of the Council of Ministers, António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970). In 1944, it was replaced by the SNI, acronym for Secretariado Nacional de Informação, Cultura Popular e Turismo (National Secretariat of Information, Popular Culture and Tourism). The change sought to remove the negative connotations the term ‘propaganda’ had acquired during the war and endowed the organ with new functions.

17 For a brief account of SPAC, see J. de Matos-Cruz, ‘Breve Dicionário Tipológico do Cinema no Estado Novo’, in O Cinema Sob o Olhar de Salazar (Rio de Mouro: Temas & Debates, 2001), 388.

18 In his memoirs, António Lopes Ribeiro traces the origins of the SPAC to Agência Cinematográfica Hamilcar da Costa (Hamilcar da Costa’s Cinematographic Agency), which produced his first feature film, Gado Bravo (1933). Lopes Ribeiro had met Hamilcar da Costa in his journey to Paris, in 1929. He would marry Costa’s widow, Elisa Correia de Mattos. The SPAC was set up with Elisa and her brother Francisco Correia de Mattos as business partners. See António Lopes Ribeiro, ‘Um filme em episódios: Tentativa de esboço autobiográfico’, in António Lopes Ribeiro, ed. J. Matos-Cruz (Lisbon: Cinemateca Portuguesa, 1983), 31, 32, 37.

19 Lopes Ribeiro, ‘Um filme em episódios’, 29, 31–32.

20 António Ferro (1895–1956), head of the SPN, invited Lopes Ribeiro to direct A Revolução de Maio in 1936. They had been friends since 1931 and co-authored the script. Lopes Ribeiro, however, was not Ferro’s first choice to direct the film. See Lopes Ribeiro, ‘Um filme em episódios’, 39–40.

21 Lopes Ribeiro would sign the regime’s second and last venture in direct propaganda, the feature film O Feitiço do Império (Spell of the Empire), produced by the colonial office (AGC – Agência Geral das Colónias), in 1940. A Revolução de Maio became the film-pamphlet of Salazarismo, earning Lopes Ribeiro the epithet of ‘the regime’s official filmmaker’. See Jorge Leitão Ramos, ‘António Lopes Ribeiro’, in Dicionário do Cinema Português: 1895-1961 (Lisbon: Caminho, 2011), 355.

22 In 1938, Lopes Ribeiro accompanied, as ‘art director’, the 8-month-long cinematographic mission to the African colonies (Missão Cinegráfica às Colónias de África), organised by the AGC. The ensuing film stock was used to make documentaries (produced and distributed by SPAC) until as late as 1946. See Lopes Ribeiro, ‘Um filme em episódios’, 56–58.

23 An instance of this kind of legislation was the famous ‘Law of the hundred metres’, from 6 May 1927 (decree 13.564), which made the exhibition of a nationally produced documentary with that minimum length compulsory in commercial cinema venues, thus securing the screening of a short ‘national complement’ before the feature film. The law was highly controversial and failed to launch the Portuguese film industry, as many expected it would. The sector would remain small and unstable in the years to come; according to film historian Paulo Cunha, short documentary films would only become a majoritarian production after 1953. See O Novo Cinema Português: Políticas Públicas e Modos de Produção (1949–1980), PhD thesis (Coimbra: Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar da Universidade de Coimbra, 2014), cf. note 66, 72–75.

24 J. de Matos-Cruz, ‘Breve Dicionário Tipológico’, 388. The SPAC films would feature in the programmes organized for school and worker’s sessions, rallies of the National Union (the regime’s only party) and the SPN mobile cinema initiatives.

25 Dated 23 May 1951 and signed by Correia de Mattos, the two documents are held in the documental archive of the Cinemateca Portuguesa–Museu do Cinema (PT/SNISC/5/JP1). They are also reproduced in the booklet that accompanies the DVD of the Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema, which will be my preferred source hereafter. Apparently, what prompted this missive was the Jornal’s failure to release the images of the funeral of the head of state, President Óscar Carmona, one day after the event. The document opens with the writer apologising for this. See Francisco Correia de Mattos, ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, in booklet of the DVD Jornal Português: Revista Mensal de Actualidades 1938–1951 (Lisbon: Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema, 2015), 30. Óscar Carmona (1869–1951) was President of the Republic between 1926 and 1951. He was a key figure in the 1926 coup d’état, which overthrew the First Republic, established the military dictatorship and led the way to the Estado Novo.

26 The letter marked the end of the Jornal Português, soon to be replaced by Imagens de Portugal (Images of Portugal), also produced by SPAC (1953–1970) and directed, in its first five years, by António Lopes Vieira.

27 Correia de Mattos, ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, 30. According to the same source, during its 14 years of production, the Jornal Português sent 58 topics abroad, but received only 16. The Portuguese images were sent to the following actualities: UFA-Wochenschau (Berlin); Pathé Gazette (London); Paramount News (New York); Metro Journal (Paris); and, from 1943, NO-DO (Madrid). In 1948 and 1949, only a few topics were sent to the International News (New York). The document does not mention any collaboration with Brazilian newsreels, but does refer that complete issues had been sent to Rio de Janeiro through the Portuguese embassy. See, ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, 30, 38-40.

28 Such had been the case of the permanent hiring of cameraman Manuel Luíz Vieira, which the journal’s low output (8 annual editions) had failed to justify. See Correia de Mattos, ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, 33.

29 Ibid., 32. According to Correia de Mattos, at the root of the problem was the management of the film stock, which had to be saved for the major official events, often taking place unexpectedly and at short notice. The lack of film stock is attributed to budget limitations and not to a general state of scarcity caused by the war – a much-repeated idea in the literature (e.g. Piçarra, Salazar vai ao Cinema, 90, 91; Piçarra, Salazar vai ao Cinema II, 15, 37) for which I found no supporting evidence.

30 Correia de Mattos explicitly mentions NO-DO’s ‘highly satisfactory results’, attributing them to price regulation and compulsory exhibition. See ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, 31. On LUCE, see Federico Caprotti, ‘Information Management and Fascist Identity: Newsreels in fascist Italy’, Media History, 11, no. 3 (2005): 177–191; on NO-DO, see Tranche and Sánchez-Biosca, NO-DO. El Tiempo y la Memoria.

31 Between June 1948 and April 1951 various cinemas suspended the exhibition of the Jornal Português. Correia de Mattos mentions the importance ‘of detailing some cases’, in order to ‘[elucidate] the reasons why some exhibiting firms suspended their exhibition’. See ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, 37. He also directs us to attached documents that are neither reproduced in the booklet of the Cinemateca Portuguesa nor held in the archive.

32 The report also mentions the full screening of the Jornal Português in the ‘Portuguese Western and Eastern Africas’, as well as the inclusion of the newsreel, whenever possible, as a complement to the SPAC’s programme of Portuguese feature films, ‘which run all over the country’. See ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, 35, 36, 38. Other sources would be needed to confirm this data and trace a more rigorous map of the places where the Jornal Português was exhibited.

33 Ibid., 34–35.

34 Ibid., 41.

35 Ibid., 42–43.

36 Despite the ideological proximity of the two Iberian regimes, the diplomatic relations with Spain experienced strained moments. For an outline of the main issues see Braga, Propaganda e Representação, 147–50, 155–164.

37 Correia de Mattos, ‘Carta e relatório à SPAC’, 43. One should be wary of the self-justifying and self-validating nature of this letter and report, but given the dearth of surviving documents, they remain crucial to the study of this newsreel.

38 For examples of this tendency, in Brazil and Spain, respectively, see Rodrigo Archangelo, ‘Contornos da Nação em cinejornais democráticos e antidemocráticos’, in A Cultura do Poder: A propaganda nos estados autoritários, edited by Alberto Pena-Rodríguez and Heloísa Paulo (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2016), 199, 201, 2012, and Saturnino Rodríguez, El No-Do, Catecismo Social de una Época (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1999), 115.

39 Piçarra, Salazar vai ao Cinema, 167; Paulo, ‘Documentarismo e Propaganda’, 111, 113.

40 Piçarra, Salazar vai ao Cinema, 187.

41 In the late 1950s Raymond Williams raised objections to the terms ‘mass’ and ‘masses’, which presuppose an exterior (and politically conservative) point of view in relation to the collective action of others. See Culture and Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), 289.

42 For a critique of this model of communication, see Morley, Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, 41–42, 44, 71–72, 262.

43 António Ferro, ‘Grandeza e misérias do cinema português’, in Teatro e Cinema (1936–1949) (Lisbon: Edições SNI, 1950), 44.

44 See Nicholas Reeves’ study, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality? (London and New York: Continuum, 1999), and his article, with the same title, on the impact of official British film propaganda on the public during the First World War, published in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 13, no. 2 (1993): 181–201.

45 E.g. Braga, Propaganda e Representação, 60, 216; Piçarra, Salazar vai ao Cinema, 123, 199; Piçarra, Salazar vai ao Cinema II, 125.

46 Tom Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, Wide Angle 8, no. 3 (1986): 63–70; André Gaudreault, ‘Le cinéma des premiers temps: un défi à l’histoire du cinéma?’, in Histoire du cinéma. Nouvelles approches, ed. Jacques Aumont, André Gaudreault and Michel Marie (Paris: Sorbonne, 1989), 49–63.

47 Strauven, The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, 17.

48 Tom Gunning, ‘Attractions: How they Came into the World’, in The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, ed. Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 36, 37. In the same volume, Gunning adds a parenthesis to the slightly modified version of his 1986 article that stresses this point, ‘It is the direct address of the audience, in which an attraction is offered to the spectator by a cinema showman, that defines this approach to filmmaking’. See ‘The Cinema of Attraction[s]: Early Film, its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, 381–388, in The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, ed. Wanda Strauven (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 384.

49 See Pedro Aires Oliveira, ‘Taking Sides: Salazar’s Estado Novo, the Nationalist uprising and the Spanish Civil War’, in Spain 1936: Year Zero, ed. Raanan Rein and Joan Maria Thomàs (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2018).

50 The Double Centenary celebrations were a set of official events launched around 1940 to commemorate the foundation of the nation (1140) and its restoration after Spanish rule (1640). It culminated in the Exposition of the Portuguese World, hosted between June and December 1940, in Lisbon.

51 When the images ‘fail’, the narrator steps in to correct them, as in the reportage ‘The Portuguese women are grateful to Salazar’, from February 1948 (issue 73). Confronted with footage of the public that exclusively shows women wearing hats and expensive outfits, the narrator adds: ‘But the ceremony was not only attended by the ladies of high society [senhoras da sociedade]; vibrating with the same sentiments of gratitude were many ordinary women [mulheres do povo], who couldn’t help acclaiming [clapping sounds] Salazar’. Yet, we never get to see these ‘ordinary women’.

52 Rodriguez, Catecismo Social de una Época, 104.

53 Braga, Propaganda e Representação, 121.

54 Ibid., 131, 135.

55 Ibid., 136.

56 These are: national politics; international politics; military/ paramilitary themes; society; culture; science/ technical progress; health; education/ youth; religion; economics; accidents; extraordinary events; sports; folklore/ tradition; general news. See Piçarra, Salazar vai ao Cinema, 158–159.

57 Ibid., 166.

58 Tranche, ‘Atracción, Actualidad y Noticiarios’, 38, 39, 47.

59 Ibid., 38.

60 It is also as propaganda of cinema itself (and not just of the regime) that we should understand the reports dedicated to the SNI film award ceremonies (issues 61 and 73), the premieres of the prize-winning films (issue 63), the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of national filmmaking (issue 8) and the arrival of Hollywood stars in Lisbon (issues 1 and 11). On the self-promotional side of the Jornal Português, see Ricardo Vieira Lisboa, ‘A Representação do Cinema no Jornal Português: Da Capital das Vedetas à Agenda de António Lopes Ribeiro’, Aniki: Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento 3, no. 2 (2016): 280–302.

61 The two football matches took place in the National Stadium, which Salazar inaugurated, in 1944, in a grand ceremony that Lopes Ribeiro captured in the SPAC-produced documentary 10 de Junho: Inauguração do Estádio Nacional (10th of June: Inauguration of the National Stadium) (1944, 19’).

62 This is the last football match to appear in the Jornal Português. The last four years of the series are weak on sport events of any kind.

63 Director of key cinematographic works, including the first Portuguese sound film (A Severa, 1931), Leitão de Barros (1896–1967) was responsible for the scenography of the main historical parades and popular marches organised in 1930s and 1940s Lisbon. He also served as general-secretary of the Exposition of the Portuguese World.

64 Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attraction[s]’, 384.

65 Tranche, ‘Atracción, Actualidad y Noticiarios’, 45.

66 I leave for another occasion the analysis of the public policies that, during this period, in an often-contradictory way, left their imprint on the sector. For a summary of the major questions that arose during the debate over the first general law of the cinema, in Portugal, finally published in18 February 1948 (Law 2.027), see Paulo Cunha, O Novo Cinema Português.

67 Piçarra’s pioneer study of the Jornal Português attributes to newsreels ‘a parasitical existence in the cinematographic spectacle’. See Salazar Vai ao Cinema, 197.

68 António Lopes Ribeiro, Animatógrafo, no. 4, 24 April 1933, 5.

69 It is worth noting that the word ‘propaganda’ then held wider and more positive connotations, merging ideas of promotion, advertising, mediatization and modernization. See Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, ‘The Optical Wave: Walter Ruttmann in 1929’, in Film History as Media Archeology: Tracking Digital Cinema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 167.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology (FCT) under contract CEECIND/03453/2018/CP1541/CT0008.

Notes on contributors

Sofia Sampaio

Sofia Sampaio is a senior researcher at Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-UL), Portugal. Her research cuts across anthropology, social history and media studies, with a focus on Portuguese film history, moving image archives, nonfiction films, and ethnographies of film production. She has published articles and reviews in national and international peer-reviewed journals and edited the book Viagens, Olhares e Imagens: Portugal 1910–1980 (Cinemateca Portuguesa–Museu do Cinema, 2017). She is editor-in-chief of Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image.