Hector Babenco

Film director Born: February 7, 1946; Died: July 13, 2016 HECTOR Babenco, who has died of a heart attack aged 70, was the son of an Argentinian gaucho who began directing films in Brazil and went on to huge success with Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), with William Hurt as a camp homosexual who shares his cell with a political prisoner in a South American jail.

The film was a critical and commercial success, Hurt won the Best Actor Oscar and it brought Babenco an Oscar nomination and offers from Hollywood. For the drama Ironweed (1987), he had as leads Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, at the height of their box-office appeal. They played a couple of tramps.

While Ironweed was a box-office disappointment, his next film At Play in the Field of the Lord (1991), which shot in remote South American jungle locations with Tom Berenger, Daryl Hannah and Kathy Bates, was a big-budget box-office disaster. It effectively ended Babenco’s Hollywood career.

Hector Eduardo Babenco was born in Mar del Plata in 1946. His father was a gaucho, with Ukrainian-Jewish forebears. His mother’s family came from Poland. Babenco was obsessed with movies from childhood onwards, moved to Europe as a teenager and began his film career as an extra in Spain.

He returned to South America, began writing and directing and made his mark internationally with his third feature film Pixote (1981), a drama which he directed and co-wrote, about the adventures of a boy living on the crime-infested streets of Sao Paulo.

It had the authentic feel of documentary and benefitted from Babenco’s casting of Fernando Ramos da Silva. To some extent his personal story mirrored that of the title character and he delivered a compelling, naturalistic performance.

Six years later, da Silva was killed by police officers at the age of 19, with strong evidence suggesting he was summarily executed, pumped full of bullets while lying on the ground.

Meanwhile Babenco had gone on to make Kiss of the Spider Woman. Hurt was desperately moving as a character caught up in a situation he does not quite understand. He entertains himself and his cellmate, played by Raul Julia, by recreating scenes from one of his favourite romantic movies, which turns out to have been a Nazi propaganda film.

Then came the rather downbeat Ironweed and At Play in the Fields of the Lord, a would-be epic, about the clash of American Christian culture with that of remote Amazonian Indians. There was always an air of tragedy about Babenco’s work.

It cost around $36 million and grossed a little over $1 million in North America. James Cameron acknowledged that he drew on it for his 2009 blockbuster Avatar, but At Play in the Fields of the Lord remains a hugely neglected and underrated movie.

Although Babenco was never again entrusted with a big-budget Hollywood movie, he enjoyed further international success with Carandiru (2003), which was based on the true-life revolt and subsequent slaughter of prisoners in a Brazilian jail. It drew on a memoir by Dr Drauzio Varella, who had worked at the prison and who also treated Babenco in the 1990s after Babenco developed cancer.

Babenco’s last film My Hindu Friend (2015), which he wrote and directed, reunited him with William Hurt, who played a film director dying of cancer. Babenco is survived by his wife, actress Barbara Paz, and two daughters from previous marriages.