As much a hot-blooded musical as it is a modern take on the ancient Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, Black Orpheus, which was adapted from a play by Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, is a typically European take on the exoticisms of Third World culture, and while it was one of the first films to exploit the local color and exhilarations of Rio de Janeiro, its romanticized perspective makes it all seem in hindsight a bit shallow and facile. The title itself, which foregrounds the blackness of the characters, is the first hint of its surface-level fascination with life in the Brazilian hillside slums, known as favelados. The poverty-stricken characters, all of whom are of African descent, seem happy and carefree, thus underscoring how bereft the film is of any social or political subtext. Of course, if viewed simply as a tragic romance in the well-worn tradition of Romeo and Juliet scored to an blistering beat, it’s hard not to be taken by the film’s charms, particularly the performances by its largely nonprofessional cast, most of whom were working in the local experimental black theater.

Bren Mello, who at the time was a Brazilian soccer player, stars as Orfeo, the film’s modern-day version of the Greek demigod Orpheus, who is often said to be the progenitor of all music and poetry. Here, Orfeo is a dirt-poor cable-car conductor who has to get his guitar out of hock at the beginning of the film. A gifted musician and singer, Orfeo’s talents are recognized only by his neighbors in the favelado (especially the children), that is, until the arrival of Eurydice (American dancer Marpessa Dawn), a naïve country girl making her first trip to the big city. Orfeo immediately falls in love with her, much to the chagrin of his fiancée Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira), a vivacious hothead who seems all wrong for the sensitive Orfeo. Those familiar with romantic tragedy will known from the outset that Orfeo and Eurydice’s love is doomed, but that is part of the draw: We want to see the passion and the purity, even if we know it will end badly.

The story is set during Carnival, a centuries-old tradition in which society is temporarily turned upside down: Social norms no longer apply, the marginalized can take center stage, and the rich and poor masquerade and mingle as if there is no difference between them. Camus immediately sets the carnivalesque tone with the film’s opening shot, in which an ancient frieze of Orpheus and Eurydice literally explodes to reveal a line of frenetically drumming sambistas dancing across the hillside above Rio. Everything is alive with music and movement, which is at times enthralling and at other times a bit silly. This setting, which hadn’t been put on film for Western eyes since Orson Welles’s unseen documentary It’s All True (1942), provides a lavish, colorful, and decadent backdrop to the romance while also infusing the film with a ravishing sense of character that is not, strictly speaking, authentic, but works well with the material. Although popular and critically acclaimed at the time, Black Orpheus also had its share of detractors, particularly the proponents of the French New Wave who saw its color and exoticism as decadent and navel-gazing, not to mention ultimately insulting to the Brazilian culture it co-opted for its romantic fantasy. There is a certain truth to that criticism, and it is hard not to see the film as a cinematic extension of French colonialism. Yet, for all its faults, the film did introduce audiences to Brazil and helped spawn a musical revolution--no small feat indeed.

Copyright ©2010 James Kendrick

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