Och’s Weekend Movie: Orfeu Negro

February 1st, 2008 by Amazone

It’s al very charming, the Dutch carnaval, but as a good latina I am chauvinistic about the real good celebration of carnival, as being practised on the overseas continents. I have never been to Brasil just before Lent, but I am one sucker for the beats and drums to dance on during roadmarch. Be it tumba, calypso from Trinidad, samba or bossa nova. Yes, you hear it well, the cocktail-loungely muzak known as bossa is also an accompanyment of the tropical carnival.
Speaking of which; my mother once told me about this movie playing around the Brazilian carnaval - Orfeu Negro - with a lot of bossa nova but it being a quite obscure French production, I didn’t come to see it until I was twentysomething. A very small movietheatre played it on a Tuesday evening and I was one of five people to show up for it. But what a fascinating movie!
Years later I found me a soundtrack on vinyl at Queens day, which made me very happy and my mother jealous. Until the day I found out that the movie was re-issued and bought her the proper DVD.
The film was directed by Marcel Camus in 1959, who had a predisposition to film pulpy scenarios of people being chased in exotic or wild places. The film won a Golden Palm in Cannes and a Golden Globe in 1959 and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1960. Camerawork is by Jean Bourgeoin and filmed in Eastmancolor.
More important is the music, made by Tom Jobim and Luiz Bonfá, who became extra more famous after the release of this movie.
The main song of the movie, Manha de Carnaval, was then performed by a score of musicians and singers, amongst others Mariam Makeba.
And André Rieu “Nehmen Sie sich fest, dar es wird emotional!”

Orfeu Negro is based on the Greek myth of Orfeus and Eurydice, where halfgod and musician Orfeus enchants everything and everybody with his beautiful music. So does he with Aphrodite too, but she doesn’t fall for him and invites Eurydice to dance with her on his music. Orfeu and Eurydice are lovestruck instead and there the drama begins. Eurydice dies, and Orfeu can’t let go of his big love and follows her into the underworld of Hades. He finds out where she is and that he can bring her back up, provided he doesn’t look back when she will follow him out of death. And of course, you can sense it on your water: he does look around and it doesn’t end well.
This movie is a modern adaptation of the story and a lot of elements are used to show the fabric of Brazilian culture, specifically in the favela’s around Rio. I really liked how they adapted the character of Hermes, the queens of day and night and the guide of the underworld.

Dark African drums, sensual women, Macumba worshipping, swinging and bulbing boobs, asses and hips swirling around on the mesmerizing sambadrums, the chaos and mayhem of the Carnaval do Rio, passion, Brazilian temperament, the saudade of loves lost and the neverending soap of life: it’s all in there.

So a good carnaval film with plenty music to dance on or weep to and nice camerawork of the surroundings of Rio should lift you up during the weekend.
Enjoy!

BT Junkie (we tried to upload ourselves, but we failed… so you’ll have to make do with this one or you can loan the DVD from my mum)
or try to assemble the movie piece by youtube piece