Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Antonius Block Director Marcel Camus grabs us from the outset in this film, with the energy of samba music playing as women return to their village carrying large containers on their head. Children are scampering about and they're on a hill overlooking Rio de Janiero, surrounded by stunning mountain peaks and beautiful bays below. The film takes the classical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice and adapts it to Brazil at the time of Carnival, and while I liked the mythological reference, it was the setting, cast, and overall vibrancy that really had me enjoying it. How fantastic it is to see all this color and energy in a film from the 1950's. The cinematography is excellent, with those beautiful vistas and sunsets, and quite a few street scenes as well. There's also some great music, with the spontaneous wailing and drumming in the streets offset by a couple of love ballads with touching lyrics.The central characters of Orfeu and Eurydice are played by Breno Mello and Marpessa Dawn reasonably well, and it was fascinating to me to find out later that Mello had never acted before. Camus saw him on the street and asked him if he wanted to be in a movie, and then he was the star. Orfeu is a ladies man engaged to the vivacious Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira), but he's drawn to the simple purity of Eurydice, who has come to the city for the first time. It's a good-looking cast, and hard not to be drawn by its magnetism. The supporting roles are fine too, starting with Serafina (Léa Garcia) and Chico (Waldemar De Souza), who engage in delightful banter. The two little boys (Jorge Dos Santos and Aurino Cassiano) are also a joy to watch.Sensitivity surrounds the film, since dancing and partying are stereotypes some hold of Brazilians or people of color in general, e.g. reducing them to simple-minded people who do nothing else. I can see the concern and understand a possible negative reaction, and it carries even greater weight when it comes from Brazilian themselves, or the likes of President Obama. I confess I have not had to live with the consequences of these types of stereotypes, so you can take my opinion for whatever it's worth, but I saw it as a celebration of the culture, and it was fantastic to see the diversity. The characters are not single-dimensional, and I enjoyed seeing the love and tenderness alongside sassy playfulness in the romances. As for the lack of realism, well, it's a Greek myth adapted to Carnival, so it's fantasy by definition - and certainly meant to be a complete view of life in Brazil. You have Death chasing Eurydice around, for goodness sake. In adapting the myth, I wish it had been more closely tied to the classical story. It's interesting to me that amidst all of the colorful, wild, chaos of Carnival, which is an extreme representation of Life, we have Death so near, and maybe that's one of the points. The film drags a bit towards the end, though the final scene of the three children dancing nicely lightens the tragedy. Overall, well worth watching, and quite a unique film - just be mindful of the sensitivity.

Kirpianuscus after few good years from I saw it, the memories are are about its poetry. a poetry including samba and Rio and voodoo and Latino spirit and crumbs from Cocteau universe and social references and folklore and impeccable acting. the same Ancient story. only the frame is different. and it remains different in a special manner. because it is a love story from the "50. the mark of decade is the basic source of seduction /interest today. and the web of dance, dialogues and carnival. the shining skin and the rhythm of music. the air of dream and the exotic flavors. a film who remains great today like in its period. because it is , in profound sense, one of the cinematography purpose definition.

tomgillespie2002 Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) arrives in Rio de Janeiro in time for the festival to escape a man whom she believes is trying to kill her. She catches a tram driven by popular playboy Orfeu (Breno Mello), who naturally falls for Eurydice's youthful beauty. Ofeu is engaged to Mira (Lourdes De Oliveira) but is particularly unenthusiastic about the idea, and uses his new pay packet to get his guitar from the pawn shop in time for the carnival rather than to buy Mira an engagement ring. Discovering that Eurydice is staying next door to him with her cousin Serafina (Lea Garcia), Orfeu falls in love with her. But during the carnival, the man Eurydice believes is trying to kill her tracks her down, revealing that he is in fact Death dressed in a skeleton costume and has come to claim her.Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Academy Award and Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language Feature, Black Orpheus is a rather strange beast, and the surprise victor in a year that saw Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour released. Although it can be argued that these are technically better films, it's not hard to see why Black Orpheus won, as its sheer individualism in its beauty, colour and culture makes it stand out above the rest. Many directors, including Orson Welles, had tried to capture the wonder of Rio's carnival, but French director Marcel Camus somehow manages to place you there amongst the samba and the sun, yet never letting the visuals overshadow this poetic, and actually very funny, re-telling of the Orpheus myth.Perhaps the most popular telling of this story in film is Jean Cocteau's Orphee (1950), the central film to his Orpheus trilogy. Cocteau invested his own ideas of surrealism, poetry and art into his film, and was more re-interpretation than re-telling, and as magnificent as that film is, it does tend to ignore the thing that Orpheus was known for, which is his almost God-like gift for music. Transporting the story to Rio's carnival, an explosion of tribal samba amongst an array of outlandish costumes, writhing bodies, and beautiful women, brings the story to life, and rather than Gods, we have voodoo doctors and fancy dress. It seems strange that Marcel Camus has done nothing of any real note since this film's success, as he somehow manages to juggle neo-realism and fantasy to a stunning degree, and created one of the most memorable films of the 1950's.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

deschreiber I know using the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is considered an admirable things about this film, but I thought it added nothing to the plot and, in fact, wrenched things about in ways that made parts of the film quite incomprehensible. We'll let pass the absurdity of the names that derived from the myth, these Portuguese-speaking Brazilians with names like Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes and dogs named Cerberus. That was bearable, although it put the film slightly off-kilter. The Orpheus and Eurydice myth really came into play near the end, when Eurydice is lost and Orpheus searches desperately for her. When I was young and first saw this film, not knowing the myth, this section seemed like utter nonsense; today, I see the nonsense is there, and I can see why, because the film maker was willing to shoehorn his story into the myth, no matter the consequences.The essence of the myth is Orpheus descending into the underworld to rescue his wife; he plays his lyre, so beautifully that no one can deny him, not even the guardians of the underworld, who allow him to lead Eurydice out of the underworld, on condition he not look back at her until both are safely back in the world of light. Just as he himself steps out into the light, he looks back, too soon, and Eurydice disappears from him forever. But what has that to do with the story in this film? The film is a modern, realistic love story. In the climactic scene after Orfeus has searched everywhere for Eurydice, he is taken to a crowded room where a voodoo-like ceremony is under way. He is told to "call" for Eurydice if he wants to find her, so he joins in the mass, ritualistic song, so quietly that his voice cannot be heard - quite a departure from the Greek myth. An old woman behind him appears to be possessed by a spirit, and she speaks with the voice of Eurydice, asking Orfeus if he loves her enough to be satisfied with her voice, never to look on her again. He turns to see where the voice is coming from, and all traces of Eurydice disappear. Now where is the sense in this, in terms of the story we have watched up to this point? We've been following an entirely realistic love story for over 90 minutes, in which the woman has gone missing and her lover has been searching desperately for her. Where has she gone? Has she died? Has she been kidnapped? No, an old lady in a voodoo ceremony speaks with her voice. Huh? What's this about? She tells him he must not try to look at her. Say what? Why not? No reason, it's just all nonsense. He turns to look, and we are to believe that he will never find his lover again. Again we ask why not? Does this make any sense at all? No, it doesn't, except in so far that the realistic love story has been wrenched and mangled in order to fit, in a rough sort of way, the plot line of an old Greek myth.The film would have been far better off to provide a proper resolution to the situation, one which fit with the realistic, this-world ethos of the rest of the movie. In my opinion, the use of the myth interfered in a bad way with an otherwise interesting and enjoyable movie.