Figure 1.--Here Zezé plays with some of his new friends. We are not sure just how a film like this was costumed. Some directors might have just had the children involved wear their own clothes. Child actors were presumably better off than the average child. So we assume that the boy playing Zezé had to be dressed down. As to Zezé's friends, we are not sure if they were professional child actors or boys recruited off the streets.

Meu Pé de Laranja Lima (My Sweet Orange Tree) is a novel written in 1968 by the Brazilian writer José Mauro de Vasconcelos (1920-84). It is the story of a little boy named Zezé belonging to a very poor family. The family has to move to a smaller home in an unfamilir neighborhood. Near his new home there is a little sweet orange tree, that becomes the best friend of Zezé. The novel was very popular in Brazil. we are unsure just what struck such a cord with Brazilians, but it is one of the most po[pular Brazilian novels. Perhaps our Brazilkian readers will be able to offer some insights. A movie directed by Aurélio Teixeira was made from the novel in 1970. Here we have an image from the 1968 film (figure 1). Notice the bare feat. It is very rare for American and European films to have the children filmed in bare feet, even when the period depicted were times when going barefoot was common. I suspect this was because the young actors were not used to going barefoot and the producers were afraid that the chilren could injure themselves. In the same year that the film was made a Brazilian television broadcasting company made a soap opera based on the novel. Other soap operas were made in 1980 and 1998. The book was so popular that a movie remake of 'Meu Pé de Laranja Lima' directed by Marcos Bernstein was made (2010). We have no further information. We do not know if there was a different take on the book or if the producers just wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the book. In the costuming the major difference seems that Zezé and probably also the other children are wearing flip flops instead of going barefoot. This is in keeping with actual trends in Brazil.

Created: 5:53 PM 5/31/2012
Last updated: 5:31 AM 10/8/2015