BLACK ORPHEUS Movie Review

Orfeu Negro

A retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice set in modern day Rio, Black Orpheus took home the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and remained one of the darlings of art houses and repertory film theatres throughout the 1960s. While the immensely influential musical score of Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfa still has the power to intoxicate (despite becoming familiar to elevator passengers and K-Mart shoppers as well), the film itself has not aged as gracefully as we might wish. Orpheus (soccer star Breno Mello), a streetcar conductor who enchants the denizens of his slum with his singing, falls hard for Eurydice (Pittsburgh dancer Marpessa Dawn), a fresh-faced young girl who's making her first visit to the big city in time for Rio's famous carnival. They sing, they dance, they fall in love in the most colorful and tuneful setting imaginable, and they are, of course, pursued by death. Even if one doesn't find a certain inherent condescension in the way Marcel Camus conceived of and handles this material, there's still a hefty dollop of thick, unearned sentimentality that has to be waded through before the final samba fades into memory. Perhaps a bit too genuinely poignant to actually be called the art house Flashdance, Black Orpheus may nevertheless be best remembered as a smashing soundtrack album, with lots of “exotic,” brightly colored pictures to illustrate the tunes.

NEXT STOP … Quilombo, Bye Bye Brazil, Umbrellas of Cherbourg

1958 103m/C BR FR PT Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lea Garcia, Fausto Guerzoni, Lourdes De Oliveira; D: Marcel Camus; W: Vinitius De Moraes, Jacques Viot; C: Jean Bourgoin; M: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luis Bonfa. Academy Awards ‘59: Best Foreign Film; Cannes Film Festival ‘59: Best Film; Golden Globe Awards ‘60: Best Foreign Film. VHS, LV CVC, FOX, FCT