Cauê Filho

A caboclo's soul wanders through purgatory (or hell), visiting many places until he boards a ship whose destination is unknown.

In a movie studio, the actors are getting made up and the crew is waiting to begin shooting the film. Grande Otelo, the bungling "king of the deck", and Marta Anderson, the blond and provocative star of the show, recite in the historical scenario of the chanchadas, the abandoned studios of Cinédia. "The photography is splendid, it is a sort of parallel song, of critique, of parody, of understanding of a certain light typical of Brazilian cinema of the times, already re-created, already stylized. And with the older actors, Otelo, Lewgoy and the others, something very important happened in the artistic perception, seeing again, doing again, it was already a concrete metalanguage" (J. Bressane).

The soap opera critiques the power struggles among rural politicians in the 1920s. Joaquim is shocked when a doctor reveals that his son, Luís Jerônimo, has a lung lesion. To recover his health, the young man leaves Rio de Janeiro for Colonel Boanerges's farm in Vila da Mata, Espírito Santo. There, he meets Zuca, and the two fall in love. Zuca is the colonel's goddaughter and the fiancée of the fearless cowboy Tobias, who refuses to accept the possibility of losing her to the outsider. Zuca and Luís Jerônimo face numerous obstacles in pursuing their love. Their romance is also threatened by the arrival of Pepa in Vila da Mata; having been in love with Luís Jerônimo back when he lived in Rio, she tries by every means possible to drive the couple apart.

A widowed conductor rediscovers love when he meets a young woman from the countryside, but doubts about his music make him question his competence and distance himself from the woman he loves.

In the backlands, the drover Ricardo marks the destiny of young Maria. Years later, in Xique-Xique, a mistake between two identical women rekindles passions, separations, and an impossible love.