Original title: Orfeu Negro

The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is transplanted to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in the week of the famous carnival in Marcel Camus’ striking Oscar winner, based on the play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes, first performed in 1956. Credited with introducing the wider world to the rhythms of samba and bossa nova, it was a huge hit in the States and beyond.

Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) arrives in Rio de Janeiro just ahead of the carnival where she meets trolley bus driver Orfeu (Breno Mello) while looking for the home of her cousin Serafina (Léa Garcia). Orfeu is reluctantly engaged to Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira) but there’s an immediate commotion between him and Eurydice and they eventually fall in love. But Eurydice is on the run from Death personified as a man in a skeleton costume and during the carnival a jealous Mira exposes her, leaving her vulnerable to Death who pursues her through the streets. Trying to hide, she ends up at the trolley bus depot where Orfeu accidentally electrocutes her. Grief stricken and refusing to believe that she’s dead, Orfeu searches for her at the city’s Office of Missing Persons, an almost deserted and eerie building where he meets the janitor who leads him down a vast spiral staircase (the film’s analogue for Orpheus’ descent into the Underworld) where he witnesses a religious ceremony and thinks that he hears Eurydice’s voice. But things are about take an even more tragic turn for the young lovers…

It may not be as memorably atmospheric as Jean Cocteau’s similar updating, Orphee/Orpheus (1950) but it’s certainly more exuberant and, until the tragic ending, uplifting. The title card literally explodes off the screen, smashing a classical Greek frieze to reveal dancing musicians and until Orpheus enters the surrogate underworld via intractable bureaucracy, it remains as brash, loud and energetic as the carnival that sits at its core.

Music is virtually a constant throughout the film, an almost never-ending pulse that keeps the story moving as vibrantly as the feet of the background characters. It would be misleading to call Black Orpheus a musical but with the insistent Latin beats and carefree dancing never far away it certainly feels like one. The film’s legacy has been felt in areas beyond film-making (American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat hailed it a particular influence on his work) but it was particularly popular with jazz musicians. Pianist Vince Guaraldi for example recorded the 1962 album Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus, a collection of pieces inspired by the film and covers of songs from its soundtrack and there was a short-lived fad for bossa nova and samba in the States following the film’s release.

One could accuse Camus of romanticising the poverty and depravation of favela life and indeed many have done so. The darker side of Brazilian life was foregrounded in Carlos Diegues’ 1999 remake Orpheus, though that version removes all the fantastical elements. At the time the film was made, Brazil as a whole was still something of a mystery to other nationalities (the film is also credited with opening up Rio as a holiday destination for wealthy Americans) and the word “favela” would have meant little outside the country. Camus must have been aware of the plight of the residents (he filmed Black Orpheus largely in the favela that sits atop the Morro da Babilônia overlooking the city) but chose not to highlight the less savoury aspects of the area. This has angered many, particularly in recent more years. It’s not clear if the same glossing over of the uncomfortable truth occurred in de Moraes’s play.

One might also accuse Camus of self-indulgence, his obvious love for Rio, it’s people and its music blinding him to the fact that the film is too long at 107 minutes. The first two thirds are a love letter to the city and the descent into the underworld is rather rushed in the closed stages. Seeing more of the darker side of the city would have made for a more effective contrast. The dingy, virtually deserted, paper-strewn missing persons office already takes the film into a much darker direction but one can’t help but feel that mor of the flipside, and particularly some background on the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé whose ceremony Orpheus stumbles upon wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The cast is an eclectic mix. Marpessa Dawn was a French-born actress and dancer imported from her home in Pittsburgh while Breno Mello was a professional footballer who Camus met in the street one day and decided would be perfect for Orpheus. Both acquit themselves remarkably well given their relative experience and it’s their natural chemistry and charm that makes the film as emotionally affecting as it is. Adhemar da Silva was Death was another athlete, a double Olympic gold medal winner in the triple jump and Camus himself turns up as Ernesto. Several of the cast were drawn from the ranks of the Black Experimental Theatre group founded by poet and playwright Abdias do Nascimento while others were locals from the favela.

Black Orpheus was a nice change of pace for fans of world cinema in 1959 who were largely used to the established canon of Bergman, Ozu, Kurosawa and the newly emergent French nouvelle vague. It was a wild blast of colour in a largely monochrome world, a charming and spirited love story and a clever appropriation of Greek mythology that wowed audiences wherever it went. It took home the Palme d’or from the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and bagged the Academy Award and Golden Globe for best foreign language film. Not everyone was struck by it though. One particularly notable detractor was Barack Obama who writes in his autobiography Dreams from My Father (1995) of seeing it with his white mother Ann whose favourite film it was: “I suddenly realized that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad’s dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different.”