I would like to think that were this film to be released today it would just be called Orpheus. But other than the title, there is surprisingly (for a 50s film with an almost exclusively black cast) little objectionable about it. As you might guess, this is part of our project of watching every film in our 50-film box set, and this week Jami got to choose the film. Part of her reason for choosing it was a belief that it was one of the few remaining ones that was not horrifically depressing. Well, spoiler alert, if that's your reason for watching it I wouldn't stay for the ending. But at least it's one of the few (so far Summertime and Spirit of the Beehive are the only others) that's in color - and ravishing color it is, too. In fact, the film is a visual (and auditory, thanks to the bossa nova beat that thrums through the Rio carnival setting) feast. As you might guess, it's a re-telling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (right down to the main characters having those names), transposed to (then) modern-day Brazil. The film manages to be a risky balance between myth and realism (with the first half tending more to the latter and the final act to the former), but in general, the story is just a framing device for sumptuous visuals. Most beautiful of all is the setting: supposedly a favela, the cluster of shacks that house Orpheus and Eurydice's cousin Serafina is high on one of the breathtakingly steep hills overlooking Rio. We watch the events of a day as Eurydice arrives from the country,
arriving on a ferry, then passing through a jam-packed Rio on a streetcar driven by (the unfeasibly good-looking) Orpheus,
in search of her cousin. She is fleeing her home because a strange man has started hanging around whom she is convinced wants to kill her (she is unmollified by Serafina's conviction that the man just wants to "get in your pants"). Meanwhile Orpheus, a notorious ladies' man, is being cornered by the predatory Mira,
who drags him to get a marriage license (and the clerk at the office puts Mira on the alert for anyone called Eurydice by mentioning the legend - pretty meta, huh?). He draws the line at buying her a ring, though, as he has to get his guitar out of hock, but agrees to pay her back (eventually) if she buys herself a ring, which she duly does. This all happens down in Rio, but the bulk of the film takes place in the favela as everyone prepares to perform in Carnival. Orpheus charms a couple of young boys (who are very appealing, particularly the one who follows him around like a lapdog for most of the film, and also gives Eurydice a lucky amulet, the eventual loss of which is a precursor to disaster) and convinces them that his playing makes the sun rise in the morning. (Sidenote: Orpheus is supposed to be a legendary guitar-player, singer and dancer, but we don't actually see him do much of any of those, and I suspect the actor (Breno Mello) can't sing or play the guitar. He's not even a professional actor - he was a professional footballer who knew Pelé - although he acquits himself well enough. Of course, up in the favela Orpheus and Eurydice meet again, and this time fall in love.
Mira cottons on and is not happy, so Serafina (who just wants to hang out with her dopey sailor boyfriend who is visiting on leave) is happy to swap places in their act with Eurydice so she can dance in the Carnival with Orpheus (her costume has a veil that she can hide behind). However, the mysterious man who stalked her at home shows up in the form of a sinister figure in a skeleton costume and we know all is not going to end well. He is chased off temporarily, and they all go and perform in carnival,
but after their performance, first Mira then the mysterious man chase down Eurydice to the station-house at the end of the street-car line. Her death, when it inevitably comes, is in the rather undignified form of electrocution on the cables of the streetcars that Orpheus drives. Orpheus doesn't actually go down to the underground to get her, he just walks around a Rio that is trying to recover from the bacchanalia of Carnival looking for the morgue that he has been told Eurydice has been taken to. (The moment when Eurydice tells him not to look back but he does takes place in a voodoo-like ceremony where an old woman channels Eurydice's voice.) He does finally find her body and carries her all the way back up to the favela, where... well, let's just say Mira hasn't finished her mischief-making. However, at least the boys discover that they are capable of playing the sun up in the morning.
I don't think one should overthink this film: its (manifest) strengths are all on the (glossy) surface. The main lesson I draw from it is that in the late 50s you could live in a favela whose location alone is probably worth millions now. I want to visit Rio de Janeiro...in the 50s.
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