Having already scooped two Golden Globes (for Best Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama and Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language), and the Best Director honour at Cannes, The Secret Agent, or O Agente Secreto in Portuguese, is one of the stand-out films of the last 12 months, tracking the travails of Wagner Moura’s Marcelo as he attempts to resist the political turmoil of the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1977 Recife, in the northeast of the country.
The political thriller is also the most heralded movie to date in the career of Kleber Mendonça Filho, the former film critic whose movies to date – including 2012’s O Som ao Redor (Neighbouring Sounds), Aquarius (2016), Bacurau (2019), 2023’s Retratos Fantasmas (Pictures of Ghosts) and O Agente Secreto – have all been situated in his native Pernambuco, and largely in Recife itself.
As anyone who has seen O Agente Secreto will testify, music plays a central role in the movie, with Donna Summer’s Love To Love You Baby, Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now and Ennio Morricone’s Guerra E Pace, Pollo E Brace – a serious earworm – featuring alongside a spate of Brazilian tracks from the late 70s.
It’s not the only Kleber movie to date in which music has played a central role, however – one of his earliest short films, Vinil Verde (worth checking out), is a macabre tale based around a haunted vinyl record, while Sônia Braga’s Clara, the protagonist of Aquarius, released in 2016, is a former music critic with a penchant for playing Queen at top volume.
As a massive fan of Kleber’s work – and a part time resident of Recife (well, for a few weeks each year anyway) – 909originals felt it only appropriate highlight five of the stand-out tracks from his oeuvre to date. Spoiler alert: I’ve tried to avoid giving any of the story away in each case, but in some instances, this is unavoidable.
Ave Sangria – Dois Navegantes (1974)
Dois Navegantes, the lysergic-drenched opening track from Ave Sangria’s self-titled debut album, isn’t just an incredible piece of music, it’s also a historical relic. Featuring in the movie Aquarius, the vinyl that Clara plays is one of the hidden gems of the psychedelic Pernambuco scene of the mid 1970s – on Discogs you can expect to pay around $500 for a decent copy.
The reason? The album’s evocative imagery – particularly the bird-human hybrid on the cover – and lyrical content drew the attention of the Brazilian military government, meaning the album was only available for two months in 1974 before being pulled from sale.
Ave Sangria themselves played what was (at the time) their last concert in Recife in December of that year, before renewed interest in the album by a new generation of fans led to a series of performances in 2014, to mark the album’s 40th anniversary. The band has been playing select shows off and on ever since (including in Olinda in February of this year, when 909originals had the chance to see them).
They also released a follow up album, Vendavais, in 2019 – we’re not sure, but we reckon 45 years between albums has to be some sort of record.
Sidney Magal – O Meu Sangue Ferve Por Você (1977)
When Kleber was looking for a suitable piece of music to soundtrack Retratos Fantasmas, an impassioned love letter to the cinemas of his native Recife (and in many ways a sister movie to O Agente Secreto) he couldn’t have picked a better one than this – it’s title literally translates as ‘my blood boils for you’.
Released on Sidney Magal’s self-titled debut album in 1977, O Meu Sangue Ferve Por Você highlights why the swarthy Rio native was one of most celebrated artists of late-70s Brazil, with a series of crescendos that make the earth tremble. Check out this live performance on YouTube, with Magal every inch the quintessential Latin troubadour.
Gilberto Gil – Toda Menina Baiana (1979)
GIlberto Gil’s tribute to ‘every girl from Bahia’ (Toda Menina Baiana) soundtracks a joyful moment from the start of Aquarius, as a birthday celebration turns into an impromptu disco, complete with hastily-arranged lighting – i.e. one partygoer switching the lights on and off.
Featuring on the Realce album from 1979 – the third in Gil’s ‘Re’ trilogy of albums, after Refazenda (1974) and Refavela (1976) – Toda Menina Baiana was a massive single at the time, and its inclusion in Aquarius mirrors the optimism of the movie’s opening, as Clara, the protagonist, has just beaten cancer. It also marks the movie’s transition to the present day, and the emergence of an altogether different ‘sickness’.
Another track worth mentioning from the opening of Aquarius is Taiguara’s 1968 ballad Hoje, which plays over the opening montage of photos from Boa Viagem’s history, emerging from the mangroves to become the Miami Beach of northeast Brazil. [Hot tip for any would-be visitors to Recife – avoid the tourist-saturated Boa Viagem and head to Pina, at the north-end of the same beach].
Conjunto Concerto Viola – Retiro: Tema de Amor Número 3 (1974)
Released in 1974, Retiro: Tema de Amor Número 3 is a wistful ballad about a beachside house with ‘palm trees, and a hammock for us to set up’, but as with other tracks in Kleber’s movies, its choice is symbolic – soundtracking the moment in O Agente Secreto when Marcelo, the protagonist, is establishing his new life in Zeza’s (the niece of Dona Sebastiana) fully-furnished apartment.
As the film unfolds, we learn not only Zeza’s fate but also that the peace Marcelo longs for is ultimately unattainable, casting the song’s idyllic sentiment in a dreamlike light.
Banda de Pífanos de Caruaru – A Briga do Cachorro com a Onça (1979)
I’ve seen O Agente Secreto three times now, and this track still gives me goosebumps. A Briga Do Cachorro Com A Onça, which translates as ‘a fight between a dog and a jaguar’, so perfectly accompanies the film’s denouement (a chase scene through Recife’s old town) that I can’t help but think that Kleber wrote the scene around the track, rather than the other way around.
Banda de Pífanos de Caruaru was founded in 1924, but it was not until the 1970s that the group – then comprised of sons and nephews of the original founders – put the group’s unique blend of pifano (a flute-like instrument, similar to a piccolo) and drums on vinyl. The version of A Briga Do Cachorro Com A Onça that appears in O Agente Secreto was taken from their self-titled 1979 album.
O Agente Secreto is out now in cinemas.