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Stars: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de Oliveira, Lea Garcia | Written by Marcel Camus, Vinicius de Moraes, Jacques Viot | Directed by Marcel Camus

Made in 1959 by the French filmmaker Marcel Camus, Black Orpheus is a Portuguese-language adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Here it is relocated to Rio de Janeiro, during Carnaval, which gives the impression that the city is in perennial party mode.

Orfeu (Breno Mello) is an eager young musician who happens to greet Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) as she arrives in Rio for the first time. Both are in an awkward position. Orfeu is facing a marriage to Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira), whom he doesn’t love. (He’d rather spend his money on a guitar than a wedding ring.) Eurydice is on the run from a stalker: a man dressed as Death.

It turns out Death has followed her to Rio. Orfeu chases him off,...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

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