On his return from Germany, where he had gone during the Fifties to study color, he decided to make a new documentary on Oporto at his own expense, which came out in 1956. O Pintor e a Cidade is a sort of return to his beginnings (his film on Douro) in order to bring the river and the city closer together in a completely different way, something which went completely unobserved at the time of the film’s release. Differently from Douro, which was a film of made of editing, Oliveira chose to make a film consisting in long shots, where duration is for the first time the driving concept. Oliveira said that this film constituted the most important turning point in his career, together with Benilde ou a Virgem Mae in 1975. We leave you with his words: “For the first time in my work I used long shots, really long. During that time no one filmed such long shots, or if they did I wasn’t aware of it. What interests me in O Pintor e a Cidade is the play with duration. O Pintor e a Cidade is not a remake of Douro. It is in some way the opposite, and it expresses, beginning with this film, my new concept of cinema”.

João Bénard Da Costa