JUST BEFORE the stylistic revolution of the French New Wave struck with Breathless, French director Marcel Camus took a jaunt to Brazil to create the magical feature Black Orpheus (1959)—a film that seems entirely sui generis, beholden to no one except perhaps Cocteau’s own hot-house revisioning of the Orpheus myth.
There really is nothing like Black Orpheus, with its bursts of color (from cinematographer Jean Bourgoin); its stunningly beautiful and graceful female lead, Marpessa Dawn, an African American dancer from Pittsburgh who moved to France; its cast of Brazilian actors, especially Breno Mello, a soccer player recruited to acting by Camus; and its influential score, which helped popularize Brazilian music worldwide.
The action is set over a day or two leading up to Carnaval in Rio, as the residents of the poor favelas overlooking the city prepare their costumes and samba choreography. Orfeo (Mello), a sunny, handsome trolley conductor, is engaged to be married to the almost ridiculously sexy Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira), sheathed, snakelike, in a red dress. Soon, however, he falls in love with Eurydice (Dawn), a naive country girl come to the city. Orfeo’s lovely samba ballads can coax the sun to rise each morning (or so the favela children believe), but he cannot rescue Eurydice from the skeleton-costumed figure of death who wants her for the underworld. A frantic night filmed at the real Carnaval leads to a fatal denouement. The classical myth is seamlessly transferred to another world, where the tragedy is just as inevitable and unbearable.
The print on this two-disc Criterion release is immaculate, with colors that dazzle the eye. The set comes with several extras, including an all-too-brief period interview with Dawn, a luminous beauty. A couple of long modern documentaries set the film in context, from its origin as an avant-garde play to its current mixed reputation in its homeland, where many Brazilians admit its importance but fret about the film’s failure to expose the real poverty and misery suffered by the inhabitants of the favelas.
Black Orpheus
Criterion; $29.95
