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Black Orpheus

In 1959, the French-Brazilian-Italian co-production Black Orpheus became an international sensation. Thanks to the pulsating rhythms of a score by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfa, Marcel Camus' film played a pivotal role in popularizing bossa nova and samba music in America. The film also created for American audiences a collective vision of South America as a place of sunshine, sweat, vibrant color, and ever-present music and dance. As such, Black Orpheus remains a somewhat controversial European romanticization of Brazilian life—particularly the poverty of the favelas—while also standing tall as a dreamy Eastmancolor musical.

The awkwardly blunt title Black Orpheus sums up the movie, adapted by screenwriter Jacques Voit from Vinicius de Moraes's play Orfeu da Conceição, which in turn adapted the classical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Perhaps a better title would have been "Bacchanal," as the setting is Rio de Janeiro's Carnival—with its primal partying—and the plotline is Greco-Roman. Or "Dance of Death," in that Death stalks the heroine through streets alive with rhythm. Or "House of the Rising Sun," given the notion—embraced by two local boys—that the hero's song makes each new day possible.

Soccer pro Breno Mello plays Camus's modern-day Orpheus, Orfeu, a guitar-playing streetcar driver with an eye for the ladies and a sunny disposition reflected in his Carnival costume.  His fiancée Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira) is determined to take him off the market, and after all, her costume identifies her as "Queen of the Day." Eurídice (dancer Marpessa Dawn) arrives from out of town, on the run from a mysterious man who's threatened her life; she relies on the kindness of her cousin Serafina (Lea Garcia), a.k.a. "Queen of the Night."

Orfeu and Eurídice cannot resist each other, and their stolen passion cannot evade Mira for long. Soon, all are swept up in the pageantry of Carnival (as kindly Hermes explains, "No one can resist the madness"), a fleeting respite from the hardscrabble existence of daily life in the favelas (but, oh, those views from the hilltop shanties!). Voit's modernization of the story is clever enough, but it's Camus' colorful stylization that gives the film surprising emotional oomph as the characters stumble into hellish circumstances—in a just-right touch, Death's skeletal black and white stands in stark contrast to the lively color. Death's terror nothwithstanding, can this much life—and love—ever truly be defeated?

The film's seductive blend of mythology and travelogue earned it the Palme d’Or at Cannes and Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. In hindsight, these choices were safe ones, but there's still sensual pleasure in the urban scenery, colorful visions, and music and dance, most of it defined by joyful abandon. Who could resist the picture's theme: "This is how our love will be/Me for you and you for me/I've had enough of sadness/I'll make you happy/I want to live in peace"?