Oliveira, Manoel de

(1908- )

   Portugal's premier filmmaker, producer, and director of the 20th century. Born in Oporto, Oliveira began his filmmaking career in 1931 with the short film Douro, Faina Fluvial (Douro, River Work). In 1942, he produced the classic film Aniki-Bobó. As a filmmaker in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Oliveira came into his own as the most celebrated and, finally, honored filmmaker and director in Portugal. In the 1970s, awards and honors began to accumulate. Still making films in his eighties and connected with the film world in his nineties, he directed a film that reached cinemas in the United States: The Convent (1994), with John Malkovich and Catherine Deneuve. Like other notables in the arts, Oliveira was nothing if not versatile and controversial, in his behavior as well as in his filmmaking methods. In his youth, he gained public notice as a top athlete as well as an actor in several 1930s films.