As mentioned previously, in “Impossible Voyages” I’m watching and writing about a run of new (to me) science fiction films to be watched over last year, which has extended to this year (2026). You can read the rationale and ground rules here. In the meantime, we are advancing from 1961 to 1962 with this movie, #40 in this series.
So far I haven’t watched many non-English language films for this series. And the few that I have have mostly been from Europe (with the exception of Rodan from Japan). This movie is the first one I’ve picked from South America (Brazil, to be specific). And I think it might be the first South American movie I’ve watched at all since my “54 Movies in my 54th Year” series, with La Nana from Chile. And I think it might be my first Brazilian movie since an earlier film from that same series, Elite Squad, and possibly only my second Brazilian film overall!
(Incidentally I watched this movie on a Youtube channel that had a big watermark superimposed over it, which is why it shows up in all of my screenshots).
Spoilers Ahead
The Fifth Power [O 5º Poder] (1962)
Directed by Alberto Pieralisi
The Story: Agents from an unidentified foreign power infiltrate Brazil and set up extensive subliminal messaging which increases the overall level of aggression across the nation and threatens to lead to complete overthrow of the government. Carlos, a journalist, and Laura, a chemist, investigate this plot and eventual are able to locate its heart. The spies are taken down by the Brazilian police before the damage is irrevocable.
Starring: Oswaldo Loureiro as Carlos and Eva Wilma as Laura. Sebastião Vasconcelos is Milton, a government ally of Carlos’. Other actors listed prominently in the cast include Augusto Cesar, Dary Reis, Nildo Parente, Leonidas Bayer, Robert Maya, Renato Coutinho, Alfredo Murphy and Orlando Villar, but I can’t find information on who they are portraying.
Comments: The Fifth Power is legitimately serious science fiction. It’s not got the most far-out there ideas going on, but it is probably the most grounded and real-feeling movie out of all the ones I’ve watched for this series, and in these days when foreign influence on elections and the questionable role of sensationalist journalism are pretty common concerns, it feels very relevant to the 2020s. Of course, these aren’t really new issues that the world is dealing with (and weren’t even in the 1960s), but there seems to be a greater kind of mainstream awareness of them nowadays than when I was growing up that makes the film feel at least a bit prescient.
Of course, the bad guys of The Fifth Power haven’t got the internet or social media at their disposal, so they are required to use complicated looking equipment tied into radio and television broadcasting towers to get their message into people’s subconscious. And this is all very effectively depicted via the film’s editing. There are extended sequences where you see the general public’s agitation increasing, whether it’s because of sports or politics or what have you, accompanied by the relentlessly unpleasant beeping, punctuated by quick cuts of the blinking lights which represent the machine’s operation.
It becomes a bit of a relentless sensory experience, and is an excellent way to depict the country’s seeming collapse.
Arguably, these sequences go on for too long. The Fifth Power isn’t particularly lengthy (only about 99 minutes), but it can take its time moving from one story point to the next. But eventually it does, and when it does it rewards the viewer for their patience. The investigation that Carlos and Laura undertake is methodical and detailed, and each advancement that they make feels earned. And then throughout the story there are a variety of harrowing action set pieces, all of which benefit from the same inventive camerawork and strong editing that we saw with the sequences I already mentioned, where the nation is teetering toward chaos.
For instance there is a gripping car chase after Carlos’ friend has discovered where the spies are headquartered, which culminates in the poor guy being shot by a sniper on the beach.
This is followed by a very well done fight on a cable car between Carlos and one of the spies, which concludes with the bad guy plunging to his death.
And the whole movie climaxes in a fight with the last terrorist, the leader of the group, in no less dramatic a location than inside of and on top of the famous Christ the Redeemer.
It’s worth noting that the movie benefits greatly from its Rio de Janeiro setting. And I say that as someone who isn’t really familiar with the city at all, but when the movie lingers on scenic vistas of the city, complete with its beaches
plus sights like Sugarloaf Mountain
and the Christ the Redeemer statue
it’s obvious that that the movie expects it’s audience to be well familiar with these places. It all helps to ground the high-stakes spectacle that we are seeing. It’s a bit reminiscent of how Hitchcock would use Mt. Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty.
The Fifth Power is not much of a character-driven story. The two main figures, Carlos and Laura, are both fine, but we don’t go anywhere especially deep with them. Still, I was concerned to see Laura get shot, and certainly was hoping that she would be okay at the story’s conclusion.
The ending actually leaves it ambiguous–the last time we see her she’s being taken away by some of the cops to the hospital. But the movie also closes out on her, after a fashion: after the last villain has been killed, we push in on a shot of the Christ the Redeemer statue while we hear a snippet of dialogue from Laura from earlier, where she is lamenting what the subliminal messages are stealing from them.
“Friendship…love…our faith in God…So what is left then?” she says. This is heard over the sound of a hospital heart monitor beeping away. Does that mean she lives? She dies? Who knows???!
Anyway, I quite enjoyed The Fifth Power, in spite of some long streches where not a lot was happening. It qualifies as a science fiction film, but it’s really more of a political thriller. It’s well shot and especially well edited, and resonates strongly still, even over 60 years after it was made. Of course if you actually told the story today, it might not work as well simply because we wouldn’t believe it would require any special external technology to pit people against each other. But I don’t know the cultural climate of Brazil in the 1960s. At the time, did this all read as just an outlandish tale, or did it feel like pointed satire? (Apparently a lot of the newspaper headlines representing the country’s descent were just real headlines, and there was a real coup d’état in Brazil only two years after this movie came out–all that might give us a clue).
Either way, it’s worth a watch!
Other Thoughts
• I don’t know where the movie’s title comes from. There is no reference to a “fifth power” anywhere in the finished film, as far as I could tell, nor to the idea of a first, second, third or fourth power.
• The bad guys in the movie never identify what country they are from. When they first arrive in Brazil, they are speaking German. Then they switch to Portuguese, and say they can use German as a second language, but they must never use their native language so no one knows where they are from. So, aside from the fact that they are apparently not from either German or Portugal, their identity is left ambiguous.
• For part of the movie, Carlos is at New York covering something going on with the United Nations.
I was just near there, just a week or two ago! My cousin and his wife just bought an apartment in that neighborhood, so it was fine to see the building crop up in this movie.
