Black Orpheus (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Black Orpheus (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] Review

Sometimes, a film's genius rests not in its thematic originality, but rather in how an older story - in this case, the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice - is told a in a new and exciting way, enabling the viewers to realize all its shimmering facets, and all its cultural and symbolic complexity. Some of these films that come immediately to mind are Cocteau's "Orphee" (1950) and Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950). Camus' "Black Orpheus" belongs on that list.

Based on the play written after reading an eighteenth-century Italian language version of the ancient Greek myth, Vinicius de Moraes got his idea when he had the vision of Orpheus as a sambista. He said that he wanted to pay homage to the indispensability of the black experience and their organic contributions to the passions of Brazilian culture. Unfortunately, Moraes grew disenchanted with Camus' vision when he visited the set one day, and claimed that his project was merely a romanticized view of the Brazilian people. Since then, many other critics have noted a perceived romanticizing of poverty and a sort of virulent Orientalism which treats the foreign Other as a mystically essentialized caricature.

The film begins when Eurydice arrives via trolley in Rio de Janeiro to visit her cousin Serafina, and to escape Death, a character that chases her relentlessly throughout the film. Unfamiliar with the city, she asks for directions to her cousin's house, which the stationmaster - named Hermes - kindly provides her. Later, we learn that Serafina lives next to Orfeu, the local Lothario stuck in an unhappy engagement with the proud, haughty Mira. Orfeu, a sensualist who would rather play his guitar than spend time with his fiancée, quickly falls in love with Eurydice. During Carnival, they grow closer and closer. Eventually, Eurydice sees that Death has found her again, and she runs to hide, while Orfeu's pursuit of her only ends in tragedy. His journey to find her in the Department of Missing Persons finds him angst-ridden, face-to-face with a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. His last chance to get Eurydice back, when Eurydice's spirit inhabits a Umbanda worshipper and speaks through her, fails when he feels compelled to look back and see if it really is Eurydice.

The way Camus alludes to mythological themes throughout the movie is subtle yet sustained. The characters live on the side of a precipitous mountainside, which consciously calls to mind Mount Olympus. Orfeu is a sambista whose guitar-playing the local children believe make the sun rise in the morning. Symbols of the sun frequently occur in the film, including children flying a sun-shaped kite and Orfeu wearing a sun costume for the celebrations. Eurydice owns a scarf with the signs of the Zodiac on it. At the end of the movie when he wanders through the city searching for Eurydice, he exits the Department for Missing Persons via a monumental, winding staircase (symbolizing his descent into the Underworld), and encounters a vicious, drooling dog (who, while not three-headed, is meant to be Cerberus.)

The cinematography blends European primitivism and aspects of the Negritude movement. Set during the celebration of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, the film is visually dominated by the joyousness of African-influenced exuberant dance and polyrhythmic music. Like the smell of petrichor in a desiccated landscape, Camus' film beautifully illustrates how music and dance are central to mythic understanding of human experience.

Black Orpheus (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] Overview

Winner of both the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus (Orfeu negro) brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was a cultural event, kicking off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning.

Black Orpheus (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] Specifications

Marcel Camus's 1959 update of the Greek myth features an all-black cast and a story set in the frenetic energy of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Orpheus, a trolley car conductor and superb samba dancer, is engaged to Mira but in love with Eurydice. For his change of heart, Orpheus and his new doomed lover are pursued by a vengeful Mira and a determined Death through the feverish Carnival night. Camus at once demystifies and remystifies the old story, shifting not only its location but its tone and context, forcing a reevaluation of the legend as a more passionate, pulsing, sensual experience. The film is really one-of-a-kind, an absolute whirl that barely needs words. --Tom Keogh

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