On location: How the secret agent captured the spirit of 1977 Brazil

On Location peels back the curtain on some of your favorite films, television shows, and more. This time, we take a look at The Secret Agent.

If you only saw a few sun-streaked stills from Kleber Mendonça Filho's new film “Secret Agent", set largely in the Northeastern Brazilian city of Recife—during a confetti-covered week of Carnival, in 1977 no less—it might seem like a charming opportunity for escapism. In reality, the political thriller follows a man desperately plotting his own escape from the threats of Brazil's two-decades-long military dictatorship, the tentacles of which have wrapped themselves around every element of daily life. Here, the joyous and the boisterous contrast the dark and insidious, allowing viewers to both be delighted by colorful street scenes and celebrations while the rot of fear creeps in, as the details surrounding our main character (Wagner Moura) and his predicament are revealed.

For Mendonça, the film was a chance to return to his hometown of Recife, and paint a portrait of a city full of contrasts, using everything from historic movie theaters to popular waterfront parks in the sultry hours after sunset to tell a story that has already garnered four Oscar nods. To get a sense of how Mendonça time-traveled through Brazil past and present, while drawing on references very close to home, we hopped on the phone with the director himself. Below, he walked us through the very real places that shaped the film and its unmistakable visual identity.

Wagner Moura's character Armando moves from São Paulo to Recife to escape his past and get a fresh start.

First things first: Was the film shot entirely on location in Recife, Brazil?

We shot 90% in Recife, which is where I come from, and so I know the city very well. It's a strong character for a film. I even wrote the scenes to be shot very specifically in locations that I know by heart.

We also traveled to Brasilia, and we did two days in São Paulo because I wanted the locations to be very specific. Of course in cinema, you can always shoot in some back street and call it São Paulo, but I really wanted to show the difference in the style of the three cities, even if they only appeared briefly in the film.

And then when Armando talks to his lawyer in Brasilia, I wanted to actually have a moment where the lawyer goes downstairs and finds a payphone, and you can tell that it's Brasilia because of the architecture. We found a wonderful location right at what they call the commercial sector in Brasilia, which was mostly built in the late ‘60s and early ’70s. And there was a very particular shot with the postman, who's bringing the telegram, and that was very specifically Brasilia.

All of this is to say that I really love cities, and I think cities are great characters in cinema. We could draw a list of amazing films that have used cities as characters. You know, New York, of course, LA, London, Madrid, Rio, São Paulo. The stories take place where the film takes place.

Many of the film's scenes unfold in a record-keeping office, for which the country's oldest public school provided the perfect filming location.

The Secret Agent unfolds primarily in 1977, but it does jump back in time and also forward at the very end. I wanted to understand how you did that—how you managed to capture not just Recife's character, but its 1977 character?

The downtown area of Recife is preserved—but as I often say, it's preserved through neglect, because beginning in the '70s, money began to leave the downtown area, as happened in so many cities around the world including in the US, when shopping malls began to appear and drew people away. In the films that I've made, I've put a spotlight on city centers. I think there is a change in the way that city centers are being seen, because people see them in cinema, and then they go, “Yeah, the city center is actually really cool, isn't it?” So it's an interesting relationship between the movie image and the reality of a certain place.

Were there some instances that made this type of time travel difficult—or revealed how the city has changed?

That central post office opened in the late '40s, and I remember it from when I was a kid, because letters and parcels and telegrams all went through there. Of course in the last 40 years, technology has changed so much, and with the internet, the whole idea of having a post office that big doesn't make sense anymore. So that's an incredible building, but they only use 10% of that space and it's for storage now, so we had to clear a lot of stuff out in order to shoot. It's a very effective setting, and I think it says a lot about how technology has changed things. You can see it in the window shot, where you see the bridge and all the traffic. It's the building on the left side, across the river.

Historic movie theaters like the Sāo Luiz instantly transported viewers to 1977 Recife.

The movie theaters play such a part in the film. Are those still standing?

Recife's in a really good place, because in the downtown area we had about 15 major movie palaces. And we managed to keep two. One, the Teatro do Parque, is from 1919, all done in Belgian cast iron. And the other one, the São Luiz, which is a character in the film, is from 1952. The Parque was restored six years ago, and it looks incredible. And the São Luiz is undergoing a new restoration, and it's still completely intact. Like, down to the light fixtures still intact, and it's quite rare. It's full of history, because literally, millions and millions and millions of people have gone through the main door at the São Luiz over the last 70 or so years. I think it's one of the most beloved places in the city of Recife. It really plays with people's affection and memory, and of course it's incredibly photogenic. All you have to do is to shoot a film there, and it will look great and interesting and full of life.

There are a few other locations that play a big role—the park where the leg runs wild, the records building, the shopping center. Which locations did you use for these?

The park is the 13 de Mayo park, which is downtown, and it's a known cruising location, a spot where people meet in the middle of the night, just as shown in the film. It's just part of how the city works. An interesting thing about how the film came together is that a lot of the main locations belong to public institutions. So the registry office is, in fact, this wonderful public school Ginasio Pernambucano that so many great names of Brazilian literature and music attended. It could be in a much better shape, but it's still a place of education with its original wooden floorboards and high ceilings. We managed to turn it into the registry office in the film. I actually remember the process of getting my first ID card in the late '80s in Recife: I went and I did the whole process of waiting while the names were being called out, just like in the film, and that was such an unforgettable sound. But that place I went in real life is not being used anymore, and it wasn't as old; it was probably from the '60s, and it has become something else, and they made horrible changes to it. So we discovered this incredible school and used that instead.

A character named Doña Sebastiana brings together a rag-tag group of political refugees at a 1940's-built apartment complex.

The apartment building where Doña Sebastiana lives, where the refugees are, is probably the last remaining building of that style from the 1940s. It really represents one way of living in his city throughout the 20th century that is still very much alive. All the apartments have tenants living in them. Just a couple weeks ago we showed the film out in the yard of that building for about 200 people. You see, there is a construction company that has its eye on that building, and I think the worst thing that could have happened to them was the fact that the film is making people say, Oh, that is a great place, it shouldn't be sold to a construction company. The film really made the building a character, and I hope it resists.

Most of the locations in the film are walking distance from each other. So the you know, the cinemas are about 300 meters walking distance apart. And of course, the post office, the central post office, is 150 meters from there, and where the carnival takes place is right next to the cinema, as you see in the film. And the final scene at the barber shop, that's another 25 meters away. So the city, in a way, became our studio, and it was a really good vibe, because a lot of people who live in this downtown area were happy. I think they suspected that the film would make the place where they live cooler, and that's exactly what happened.

Ninety percent of the film was shot on location in Recife, with just a couple scenes from São Paulo and Brasilia.

When you talk about markers of daily life, I couldn't help but appreciate the phone booths in the film. I've spent some time in Brazil over the past decade, and they brought up so much nostalgia for me—I'm sure even more so for Brazilians.

The phone booths have always been so iconic. They used to be yellow up until the early '90s, when the telephone company was run by the state. And many people said, “Oh, the service is no good because it's state owned,” and then it was privatized, and they painted them blue, and of course, the service didn't get any better. But the irony is that they've been rediscovered by the film, and on social media, just as the few remaining ones all over the country are going to be removed because they have become obsolete.

Brazil's iconic phone booths are a recurring image throughout the film—and a nostalgic reminder in present-day Brazil.

You're from Recife, and this film touches on the idea that Recife doesn't always get the same spotlight as southern cities in Brazil. Was that your goal—to celebrate the place you came from?

I think it's just a byproduct. But you know, I remember back in the late '80s when I saw Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown by [Pedro] Almodóvar, it was probably the first time that I saw Madrid as a setting for a film. And I thought it was really interesting. It was not Los Angeles, New York. or London. It was Madrid, which I thought was great, and then his following film, "Tie me up! Tie me down!" was Madrid again. I also remember seeing Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho and how it featured Portland, Oregon, and I thought it was so refreshing to see a new city.

When you look at some American films that take place in cities like New Orleans, it's really the outsider's point of view on New Orleans—they make New Orleans look and feel really exotic and strange. I really love something like My Own Private Idaho because it's just Portland. It's a city where cinema exists as as storytelling device, but it's still a city. You can see the streets and the cars and the people. So that's what I really go for: to use it in the most unassuming way, while still being well composed and photographed of course.