Black Orpheus

If it does nothing else, seeing "Black Orpheus" will make you want to pack up immediately and go to Rio de Janeiro. The movie convinces you that the city's sparkling harbor and dramatic green hills must be one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, especially when accompanied by a soundtrack of energetic samba and smooth bossa nova music. The cliffside shantytowns teem with vitality, and are never too poor to rig up an elaborately costumed samba show for Carnival. Even the fact that the movie retells a tragic Greek myth barely detracts from the overall effect. It makes Rio seem even more magical, a place where archetypal stories of love and death still hold their power.

In this version, Orfeu (Breno Mello) is a streetcar conductor who moonlights as a musician, and Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) is an innocent country girl. The movie starts as a simple love triangle (Orfeu has an inconvenient fiancée) but becomes increasingly surreal as it progresses. Death, represented by a man in a skeleton suit, literally pursues Eurydice while going unnoticed by everyone else, who may assume he is just dressed up for Carnival. (His motivations are never explained, but perhaps he is jealous of Eurydice's youth and beauty.) The movie finds clever ways to depict the events of the original legend, and adds a wonderful sense of atmosphere, as Orfeu goes through the "underworld" in the middle of the night.

Lourdes de Oliveira and Léa Garcia give vivid supporting performances, as, respectively, Orfeu's jealous fiancée and Eurydice's exuberant cousin. I also liked the two scrappy, unsentimental street kids who idolize Orfeu.

Overall, "Black Orpheus" is a successful attempt to place a Greek myth in a modern context, retaining the story's original tragedy while adding new, contrasting flavors and rhythms. I would especially recommend it to fans of Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge," another color- and-music-saturated film with a love story inspired by the Orpheus legend.

There are so many reasons Black Orpheus is important to cinema. First, how many people know that prior to Marcel Camus making this film the late Orson Welles attempted to capture Rio Carnival but with no story, plot, or script? In 1942, Welles discovered voodoo was at the root of the carnival samba, and started filming in the favelas, the slum shanty towns on the hills of Rio...it was considered by Hollywood to be anti-establishment and dangerous by Brazilian authorities. Thus, Welles was not able to complete his film.

Samba is a Portuguese form of music, the word was derived from the West African bantu word "semba", meaning "invoke the spirit of the ancestors". Long outlawed as a dangerous expression of black slave culture, samba music eventually gained legitimacy and became a big part of carnival.

Nearly 20 years later Black Orpheus achieves what Welles was trying for and goes beyond it. To start Marcel Camus had a script to work from whereas Welles was trying to wing it on the spot. Camus successfully recreated the Orpheus-Eurydice myth using the Rio Carnival as the back drop. The main characters retain the mythological names, including the symbolic Death. This works because it is Afro-Latin culture where pagan-Christian names were more evident and because the Carnival itself was such an important part of the story. History manifests as a deja vu, a cyclical progression of event and re-incarnation, understood only by the occultic transformation of samba, trance and possession, for which the Carnival is the engine.

To those who misunderstand or are ignorant of samba, voodoo, or the Rio Carnival Black Orpheus may seem overwhelming, especially because of all the singing and dancing but samba (and Carnival) is ritual, in its most elementary form it is a raw cacophony of primitive drumming, clapping, chanting... and the droning cries of the dancers who stagger on the edge of the "stage", seeking possession and reincarnation.

Black Orpheus won the Palm d'Or in 1959 at Cannes. It was seen as progressive because it featured black actors and the pluralist culture of modern Brazil. It also gives outsiders a view inside of a ritualistic, non-Western culture and that is why it was and is so important to cinema.

Do they clean the streets in Rio De Janeiro? Well, of course they do. When this carnival is over.

And if you watch this movie you will see that they do it very near the end of the last reel, as in the morning when the truck comes round spraying water, just one of a thousand little details that director Marcel Camus got right, and one of the most insignificant. But it is from a multiplicity of detail that an edifice of cinematic genius is constructed.

The true brilliance of Black Orpheus lies in the people who live on the side of the cliffs overlooking the harbor at Rio. It is their energy that prevails. Then there is the color, the costumes, the pounding rhythms, the spectacular vitality of life that is depicted as a carnival of dance and song in which we are driven along as on a wave. And yet there is the constant reality of death. And it strikes in way we cannot comprehend, fatalistically, and we are helpless to do anything about it. And then Orpheus sings, a new Orpheus perhaps, and the sun rises again, and a little girl in white, looking like Eurydice in miniature, begins to dance as the little boy Orpheus plays his guitar, telling us that time has come round again.

Well, that's the plot as adapted by screen writer Jacques Voit from the play by Vinicius d Moraes as divined from the Greek mythology. Supporting this arresting conception is the music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfa. I recall the former as the composer of bossanova who gave us "The Girl from Ipanema" and made the samba international. Starring in the title role as the streetcar conductor who is loved by all is Beno Melo, who might be seen as the natural man and native of paradise. The very pretty Marpessa Dawn plays Eurydice, an innocent from the country who falls in love with Orpheus and his song. Lourdes de Oliveira plays his intended, Mira who is hot blooded, vital and beautifully ordinary. But the actress I recall most vividly from the time I first saw this in the sixties was Léa Garcia who played Serafina. Her exuberance and comedic flair struck me as something completely different from anybody I had ever seen before. And then there are the boys who follow Orpheus around and emulate his every move. With their torn shirts and unflagging optimism, they represent the new day that will dawn.

If you haven't seen this classic of world cinema, you are in for a singular experience. There is nothing else like it that I know of. And it is as fresh today as when it was made almost half a century ago.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Black Orpheus

I saw this film for the first time in the '60s and found it a beautiful

and poignant retelling of the legend. I thought about it off and on

over the years, however, since it was never shown on TV, it faded

from memory. Then in the 1980s, there it was in video format in a

store. It was very expensive (the most I've paid for one), but I was

so delighted to find it, I could hardly wait to get it home.

It was more beautiful and haunting than I remembered. There's a

special uniqueness in the way the inexorable tragedy plays out in

such an unorthodox setting. You know how it has to end, but you're

still drawn into the lives of the characters. How the director ever

conceived of something so original amazes me.

This film is a wonderful experience.

"Orfeu Negro" places the Orpheus legend in Rio de Janeiro at the time of its Carnival. Marcel Camus' film is fast paced, shot it beautiful color, has lovely and vibrant music (by Luis Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim) and a most attractive cast, particularly the two leads. There is a vital, throbbing tempo established which seems to propel the story forward in an almost choreographic manner. The film remains a quite unique piece of work, with many haunting images.