“Fantasia Lusitana”, de João Canijo: O Portugal ficcional vs. o país real. O Estado Novo e a ‘portugalidade’. A construção da identidade

Abstract

In Lisbon, which welcomed refugees from around the world, we lived in the 40s of the twentieth century a fantasy of peace and happiness in opposition to the capitals of Europe affected by the Nazi invasion. In this documentary of Joao Canijo we are struck immediately by the title - "Fantasia Lusitana" - from which we foresee a deviation from reality, and stress the irony, a staging point from which we look at Portugal. The director shows in an overwhelming "Way the images used in the Portuguese World Exhibition of 1940 (the high point of propaganda of the Estado Novo) as a reference, overlapping texts of three famous foreign travelers who passed through Lisbon during World War II (Alfred Dobfin, author of "Berlin Alexanderplatz", Erika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann, and Antoine de Saint Exupery, author of "The Little Prince"). The mixture of simultaneous triumphal images of paradisiacal Portugal and the lucid and poetic texts read in "voice-off', function as a methodical disassemble with which the film begins (the phrase "everything for the nation by Salazar) and the attempt to create a virtual identity. It shows a nation of fantasists concerned with the supetfluaus and where, paradoxically, the foreigners are the ones who believe the least in this less evident reality. Canijo shows how Portugal of the past continues today and dispels the unreality of the Portuguese identity, inoculated at Estado Novo, and which still lingers today.