182. Black Orpheus

Song - Samba Pa Ti (Carlos Santana)

Movie: Black Orpheus - Orfeu Negro (Marcel Camus, 1959)

Up until the final stretch of the film, there is barely a scene in which we don't hear tambourines and other percussion instruments play bossa nova/samba sounds. The music is relentless, especially in scenes where it is not centered, but just a background hum. It feels almost impossible to shut it off either when Orfeu is playing a beautiful song on the guitar or when a loud plane is passing by. And even when three or four different sounds in a scene intermingle, the Brazilian Carnival music, coming from somewhere offscreen, is inescapable. At a certain point this approach starts to grate; the repetitiveness becomes too much, distracting from everything else that is going on. At the same time, I can't remember seeing another film use music in quite this way and while I didn't partuclarly like it, I was at least fascinated by Camus' single-minded commitment.

The plot is much less inventive. Orfeu is about to get married to Mira, without being over the moon about it. When Euridice comes to his village to visit her niece, it's love at first sight, making Mira jealous. Meanwhile, there is also a masked figure (played by two-time Olympic triple jump champion Adhemar Ferreira Da Silva) who wants to kill Eurydice for unspecified reasons. This is all set against the backdrop of the Rio Carnival and the villagers' preparations for it, which is what gives the film its reason for being. It is highly committed to showing off the clothes, the music and the dances, but if you are looking for dramatic/narrative complexity, this is not where you will find it.  

Camus has been criticized (by Barack Obama, among others!) for presenting the Brazilian villagers through a white European lens and imagining them as simple folks solely interested in partying. That's not wrong, but Camus' really does immerse himself in the Rio Carnival culture and he makes a genuine effort to authentically present its rituals, habits and stylings. He also stages the familiar ending to the story of Orpheus in a way that feels truthful and organic to the society he depicts, re-imagining and adapting it as a Brazilian story, rather than 'westernising' the Brazilians to make them fit in the myth. I also liked that the film makes a clear distinction between the traditional way of life of the villagers and the advancing modernity of Rio de Janeiro (the film makes it a point to highlight the skyscrapers) without presenting them antagonistically. Neither is a threat to the other.