Black Orpheus (1959) It's entirely possible we watched this film, long regarded as a cinematic classic, back in our bright college days......but the memory of it drifted so far back in our mind, we took advantage of renewing our acquaintance when it recently aired on TCM.......
What struck us first about it when we dug into its backstory, was its pivotal appearance in President Barak Obama's boyhood recollections.......as a film that entranced his white mother but that he himself, even as a boy, found condescending in its depiction of Brazilian blacks as child-like caricatures, devoted only to dancing in the gaudy Rio carnival.
(This very same opinion, by the way, was one held by many Brazilians.....)
Yes, the Prez does have a point here about the film's characters........but in re-watching it, we never picked up any deliberate , overt offensiveness. The film's far too busy with its main agenda.....the then groundbreaking attempt to blend an updated , fanciful mythological tale with the explosively infectious music of South America.
The results were something to see, allright.......the film practically bursts on to the screen with a non-stop barrage of relentless, percussive Samba melodies and overheated passions.......(overheated in every sense of the word.....)
The retold myth is that of Orpheus and the great love of his life Eurydice, for whom he risks a futile trip to hell and back to retrieve her from an untimely death. Set in the midst of Rio de Janeiro's world famous carnival, the film re-imagines Orpheus(Breno Mello) as a streetcar conductor and aspiring musician....his Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) is now a sweetly innocent girl who's on the run from no less than Death himself.......and Orpheus struggles to protect her from that mysterious costumed skeleton as well as his volcanic tempered ex fiance Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira) who's in full hell-hath-no-fury mode.,...
All of this melodrama, pitched at red hot temperatures, plays out to the non-stop eye-catching, ear-catching sights and sounds of the carnival........almost to the point of making us wish all the noise and music would let up for a minute.....(which it does briefly from time to time in order to let the story proceed.....)
Though we do comprehend young Obama's reaction to it, we didn't think of "Black Orpheus" as a film we could relate in any way to the real world. It exits solely as such a self-contained fairy tale fever dream......kind of a snow globe universe, if you will, but one set in a tropical climate. And the frenzied dancers of the film don't seem that much different from today's ebullient Tik-Tokkers of every age, race and gender who post videos of their dancin' feet that can't keep still......
Quite an experience to behold overall and one that every classic cinema buff should see at least once.....(even if you end up holding the same view of it as President Obama)......3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2).....so check it out soon and dance the night away.....
No comments:
Post a Comment