Please explain to me why this is a good movie. I wanted to like it, but...
The singing and dancing was good and all, but there was hardly any plot. He barely even knew her, and we barely even knew her. Why should we care? I guess it had a nice ambience to it, but that's it.
I agree. There was very little there. And I would go further and suggest the singing and dancing were excessive.
shareYou have to know the myth and the interpretations coming along with it
or you wont understand a single thing.
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You're only as healthy as you feel
I also agree...
In my Inside the Performing Arts class we were shown clips of this film and we analyzed them. We compared them to the original Orphic Myth and there is a lot going on.
Here's a few of the things we talked about:
1. There is the notion of rebirth, and the continuity of song. In the original myth, birds fly from Orpheus's grave. Birds, of course, are known for sweet songs... Orpheus's song/music lives on in the birds. In this film, we see the little boy who is noted to get the guitar (Orpheus says that he was given the guitar from someone else and that later he will pass it on to someone else... pass the gift of song.
2. There is the notion of power over Nature. In the original, when Orpheus played he could calm people, drown out the Sirens and make nature follow him (something like "all things animte and inanimate followed him"... things like rivers and rocks would move)... This film alludes to nature repetitively, especially in Orpheus's home. It's filled with all sorts of animals. In addition when two boys visit him they ask him if it is true that he makes the sun rise when he plays/sings.
3. Notion of music related to romance... Orpheus's singing makes Eurydice dance... he attracts her, among other women.
etc. etc. I'm sure there is more, but this is all I have with the clips I've seen.
The golden Orfeu IS song; he is beauty and art. here, he is a simple unassuming trolley driver, but we get the idea of him as truly the god in his saying that he is the current king, and the way the girls all love him, and then there is the golden see-through costume. Orfeu has the power to make the sun rise. He is the power of pleasure, of beauty, of art to overcome everything---except death.
The most marvellous display imaginable of the hedonic is in the Carnaval of Rio de Janero, and this film creates for us the myth of a Rio which is all samba, even the passengers on the ferry, and the trolley passengers who literally sweep visitor Eurydice off her feet. In this place and with this beautiful young woman, Eurydice, who embodies the sense of timelessness that we hold about youth, death (Death, or Hades in the Greek form) is stalking her and only she understands it. We all know youth will fade, and we say "so what?" when we mean that we are just unable to believe it. It is so vibrant that we cannot believe it can't survive anything
No one will believe that it is death who seeks her, and even when she is gone, and Orfeu seeks her through an Obeah ritual, he will not accept that she is no longer available to him, except as a voice. It is unbelievable that she will not return, she who is the embodiment of beauty, of feminine grace.
I don't think this is cynical, but rather existential. Orfeu brings meaning to life by playing to bring the sun up. So, left without Orfeu, the children pick it up by following that form, and honor Orfeu who is now gone as well, not by mourning but by playing to bring the sun up. That the sun might rise without his music misses the point. The magic is in the form itself, not in whether it is necessary for the sun to be raised, but that it is necessary for the children to raise it. I think we, the audience are invited to be the children, and to raise the sun. Purified we can have some sense of a return to innocence.
For myself, however, Even if I thought the story was without interest, I would still think this movie was wonderful for its music, costumes, and dance. I can think of nothing its equal. The people of this movie are a delight as well.
I know the myth, smarty pants. I know and love the opera. This just stinks. Thank God for a few sane folks who recognise this tripe for what it is.
shareIs it because it's all black? Because it isn't tripe.
shareWe have a lot to thank God for! But thanking Him because some people dislike this movie is snobbishness of the worst kind.
shareYou've both said it beautifully--YOU DON'T GET IT.
And Orpheus didn't "barely know her." He had known her, and will know her, for eternity, something that Orpheus knows intuitively from the start, but finally has to admit it when the city clerk tells him the story. You may want to read the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the movie will mean a lot more to you then.
The film is brilliant.
"You have to know the myth and the interpretations coming along with it
or you wont understand a single thing. "
Exactly.
the Orpheus story is just like that, it's a Greek myth and the way they set it at Carnivale was genius....
But think about it, this movie was made in 1959, when it was made, it was very special....it still is.
Maybe it's because I watched it on VHS, but I had to turn the sound off because everyone's voices were so high pitched. I guess I'm not familiar enough with the mythology, as here's all I came away with:
Everyone is dancing and shrieking instead of talking.
Dude dumps hot chick for other chick because of her name.
Spider-Man chases shrieking girl.
Shrieking girl dies.
Dude gets hit in head with rock.
The End
In the myth, Orpheus has a following of many, many women who all vy for his attention. He meets Eurydice and falls madly in love with her. They decide to run away together and, while she's waiting for him in the woods, she's bitten on the heel by a snake and goes down to Hades, the world of the dead. Orpheus cannot find her and so goes to Hades to bring her back to the living world. Hades, the god of the underworld (known as Pluto to the Romans), hears Orpheus' story and decides to allow him to walk Eurydice out of the world of the dead. The only catch is, he cannot look back to make sure that she's behind him or else he will lose her forever. Orpheus walks her all the way to the edge of the border between living and dead, but he hasn't heard her at all - she won't answer his cries. Fearing that she isn't really behind him, he looks back only to see her disappear back to Hades. He returns to the land of the living and is so morose that he refuses to play any music for his old female followers who rip him to pieces in their frenzy.
Like all Greek tales, it cautions against intense passion and warns of what happens when one questions the Gods.
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I ain't your friend, palooka.
Thank you for the quick recap.
I do think OP has a point though. Nice film for song, dance, colours and atmosphere... but I don't think moving the Orpheus story to Rio made it really much more interesting. I'd say the film rather made the story more bland than the actual legend was. Just because it's an obvious allegory doesn't make story of the film very interesting imo.
I haven't seen Cocteau's adaptation, but when I rented Black Orpheus I think I was still a senior in high school, and this was actually my introduction to the Orpheus-Eurydice myth. Now I'm back in college, and taking a class on "Classical Influence on Modern Literature" and was recalling this movie having just re-read Ovid's tellling in Metamorphoses.
zilly008's comment on whether it's "inappropriate" to have such color, celebration, music, etc in a film dealing with death. I think that it's absolutely appropriate. It makes me think of Dia de los Muertos, and I've long appreciated this Mexican holiday, and it's attitude towards death. It is a day of remembrance of those who have died, and it also has an ironical and comical attitude surrounding death, a sort of fatalistic mocking of death....kids eat candy shaped like skeletons, etc. Death and life are of course impossible without each other...
Also, doesn't the Carnival season and the celebrations surrounding it lend an extra poignancy to the pain of the story...I think it helps to lend that element of "katharsis" which was so important to the ancient Greeks' ideas about classical tragedy.
I also thought it was great that they incorporated indigenous religious culture in the place of Greek paganism....I'm not sure what the dominant indigenous religions in Brazil were, but I'm guessing it would be not so dissimilar from the VoDou of the Caribbean.
Again, I haven't seen this movie in several years...but I think it's a wonderful retelling of this ancient myth.
Redcrow:
This is a very old story and retold with a Afro-Bralizian sensibility. It is a myth and the morale of this myth is that love transcends even in death. This idea comes from the Greek Mythology and tragedic love story of Tristan and Isolde. It's about love that is so deep and binding that even death can stand its way. This is a dangerous thought for anyone to consider that this is my life and willing to live it even its pain. It's not an easy concept for anyone. There's a book called "The Power of Myth", and Joseph Campbell discussed the very idea of love and marriage. These two don't come together because they were free to love one another. Orpheus has promised to marriage someone else Mira who he really does not love, and Eurydice is not free because her ex-lover wants to hunt her down to kill her after jilting him.
Orpheus and Eurydice come together for a reason they need one another and with that they fall in love. The story doesn't get involved with the detail of the two loving one another because it's a carnival in Rio and anything could happen during that tme. It's part of the myth, and find that the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, a Greek Myth and the Carnival in Rio a wonderful blend. It's a great concept from the director and writer's perspective to bring an ancient myth into a comtemporary setting. It was also a way to bring Samba music because after the release of the movie in 1959 jazz greats like Stan Getz brings that very music into American jazz with the classic the "Girl from Impenda". It's an interesting film from a cultural perspective. The movie is about sadness, love, pain, and freedom. It's about stepping out of the social norm and living the life you wish to create despite the rejection from society.
Dude, it's the "Girl from Ipanema", not the "Girl from Impenda". JESUS MURPHY.
shareBecuase it's good, suspend disbelief.
shareThe crazy dancing and music is supposed to represent the Dionysiac cult, and the constant references to the sun are a representation of Apollo. There is a bunch of little details that are supposed to go with the Orphic myth like the "decent into the underworld" when he meets the old guy with the broom and goes into the basement with him.
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One of the things that this movie shows me is the fatalism of ancient Greek beliefs, which seem to be mirrored in the Brazilian culture. The Greeks had a pretty bleak outlook on life and the afterlife, and the comparison to the impoverished people of Rio de Janeiro is pretty close. These people in Rio are poor and hungry, and basically have nothing but a little celebrating, in spite of their desperate lives, during Carnivale.
The end, in which the innocent little children take up Orpheus' guitar and sing and dance to bring the sun up makes me sad. They are just taking the place of Orpheus and Euridyce, in the cycle of life and death.
"The end, in which the innocent little children take up Orpheus' guitar and sing and dance to bring the sun up makes me sad. They are just taking the place of Orpheus and Euridyce, in the cycle of life and death."
Hey now-- thats how the world works! the children are doomed to die, sure, but so is everyone. Our lives are transient-- music is transient-- the idea is to live while you are alive! You shouldnt feel sad, you should feel MOTIVATED-- go dance, go live.