Chanchada is the name of a genre of Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian comedies

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

, often musical

Musical film

The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...

. Its name (given by journalists and film critics of the 1930s), coming from the Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

an Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 slang and meaning "mess", "trash", "trick", implied the ease in accessibility of these films' content to a culturally deprived audience.

In 1935, the company Cinédia of Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 started the period of chanchadas with Alô, Alô Brasil!. The early chanchadas were often seen emulating the Hollywood

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 musicals of the era. Most presented stars of contemporary music like Carmen Miranda

Carmen Miranda

Carmen Miranda, GCIH was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie The Gang's...

, Francisco Alves, and Orlando Silva. It was the company Atlântida of Rio that would elaborate and perfect the conventions of chanchada. Atlântida was founded in 1941 by a group of intellectuals to produce high quality films but with commercial restraints, they started to produce chanchadas. The film Carnaval no fogo (1949) by Watson Macedo established the main scheme for chanchadas: a loving couple, jeopardising gangsters, a friendly and comic duo, and promotion of "carnival music

Brazilian Carnival

The Carnival of Brazil is an annual festival held forty-six days before Easter. On certain days of Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival," from carnelevare, "to remove meat." Carnival celebrations...

". However, the actors that brought chanchadas the ultimate success were not male and female idols (Anselmo Duarte, Cyll Farney, Eliana, Dercy Gonçalves) but the comic sidekicks (the duo Oscarito

Oscarito

Oscarito was the stage name of Brazilian actor and comedian Oscar Lorenzo Jacinto de la Imaculada Concepción Teresa Diaz. Oscarito was born to a family of circus comedians. His first film was Voz do Carnaval , which also featured Carmen Miranda. He became a sought actor for chanchadas...

 and Grande Otelo

Grande Otelo

Grande Otelo is the stage name of Brazilian actor, comedian, singer, and composer Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata...

, Zé Trindade, Ankito, Costinha) and villains (José Lewgoy

José Lewgoy

José Lewgoy was an American-Brazilian television, film and theatre actor.He was born in Veranópolis, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, to a Russian father and an American mother, who met in New York. He died in Rio de Janeiro. He was considered one of the best actors in Brazil, and was usually typecast...

, Wilson Grey). The music featuring famous samba-canção

Samba

Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...

 stars like Ângela Maria, Nélson Gonçalves, Cauby Peixoto, and Emilinha Borba often functioned as a rupture in the plot rather than serving the continuity

Continuity (fiction)

In fiction, continuity is consistency of the characteristics of persons, plot, objects, places and events seen by the reader or viewer over some period of time...

. The most prominent director of the genre was Carlos Manga who directed some most notable chanchadas like Nem Sansão, Nem Dalila (1952), Garotas e Samba (1957), and O Homem do Sputnik (1959).

Although most chanchadas adopted the conventions set by what became known as chanchada da Atlântida, "chanchada" later became an umbrella term to designate all comedy films with superficial content. By the end of 1950s and with the advent of Cinema Novo

Cinema Novo

Cinema Novo was practised by Brazilian filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s. In Portugal, Novo Cinema flourished after the 1960s, where it lasted, inspired by Italian Neo-Realism and the French movement of the New wave, the direct cinema techniques, and by the ideals the Carnation Revolution up to...

, chanchada became increasingly frowned upon and 1960s brought the end of chanchadas in popularity.