non, ou la vaine gloire de commander
(Non ou a vã glória de mandar)

For Manoel de Oliveira, NON ou a Vã Glória de Mandar was the film that earned him belated international recognition. This eleventh feature film by the colossus of Portuguese cinema, then aged 82, inaugurated his most prolific period as twenty-one more films were to follow on until 2015. It is not so easy to shelve Non… by snugly labelling it as a historical film: rather, it dissolves all references so as to open them out, becoming alternately a chronicle, a poem, a mystical vision, a reflection on civilisation, and a questioning of a country’s tragic destiny. On the eve of 25 April 1974, in the Angolan bush, second lieutenant Cabrita, a history teacher in civilian life, tells his comrades in arms the Portugal’s story through some of its most striking defeats. The journey of a people whose trajectory remains an enigma for those who recount it; by taking the title of his film from a famous sermon by Father Antonio Vieira
– with the very French “Non” marking the irreversibility of the palindrome –, Manoel de Oliveira forges the idea that the grandeur of Portugal depends less on its conquests and patriotic, expansionist fervour, and more on its universal legacy, which serves to reveal the vast extent of our world. JB