Sonhando com Milhões (1963)

*spoilers below*

A tax inspector is going through the tax declaration of some big sugar mills who have defrauded the IRS on a large amount of money in taxes. At that time, his maid is sacked by his wife and, through happenstance, goes to work for the owner of one such company. She then acts as an intermediary between the defrauders and the tax inspector, with the mission of bribing him into exonerating the companies from the payment of their due taxes and fines. The inspector's wife -- who is fed up with her materially mediocre life -- is the maid's ally in her mission.

This drama deals with a chronic problem in Brazil: corruption of public agents. It exposes the social and psychological mechanisms through which corruption comes to happen. In Brazil, things haven't changed much from what they were at the time this movie was made. The ending leaves a certain amount of doubt in the viewer as to whether the author was being naive or cynical. (*big spoiler ahead*) The protagonist does not yield to the temptation of accepting the bribe, and is "rewarded" for his honesty with a job offer in one of the companies he was auditing. He accepts it, and everyone is happy. Though this goes unstated, this would be a very clever way of getting rid of the tax problem for the companies in question. The film does not see a moral problem in it for the protagonist. The maid remarks that "sometimes honesty is rewarded" and that's that. As I said, that is either very naive or very cynical. Anyway, although the film has merits and depicts a very real situation, its sense of humor isn't terribly sophisticated, and neither is the dramatic development.

Rating: 37