Orfeu Negro

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Movie
German title Orfeu Negro
Original title Orfeu Negro
Orfeu Negro, 1959.jpg
Country of production Brazil , France and Italy
original language Portuguese
Publishing year 1959
length 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Marcel Camus
script Marcel Camus, Jacques Viot and Vinícius de Moraes (drama)
production Sacha Gordine
music Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Carlos Jobim
camera Jean Bourgoin
cut Andrée Feix
occupation

Orfeu Negro is a film from 1959 that relocates the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the present of the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro . Directed by Marcel Camus . The Franco-Brazilian production is based on the drama Orfeu da Conceição by Vinícius de Moraes , which premiered in 1956.

action

Euridice, a country girl, leaves the ferry and arrives in Leme , a district of Rio de Janeiro. There, in the hustle and bustle of the carnival preparations, she meets the tram driver Orfeu, who is on duty on line 49 to Morro da Babilonia . He's flirting with Euridice. At the terminus, she asks Hermes, the administrator of the tram depot, how to get to Babilonia, a favela on the Morro, where her cousin Serafina lives.

Orfeu is engaged to the spirited Mira. You order the contingent. The registrar jokes, to Mira's annoyance, that an Orfeu should marry a Euridice. Instead of buying a present for the bride, Orfeu triggers his guitar at the pawnbroker's because he is a musician at a samba school in Babilonia that is preparing for the carnival in Rio de Janeiro . Serafina, a neighbor of Orfeus, also belongs to this group.

Serafina awaits the return of her lover, the stupid sailor Chico. The disappointment that his cousin Euridice appears in his place does not last long. Serafina advises Euridice to take part in the carnival. Orfeu and Euridice meet a second time to prepare.

Orfeu plays the guitar masterfully. The boys Zeca and Benedito admire his game and believe that he can make the sun rise with his music. Euridice is also enchanted by the Orfeus game. They fall in love. Serafina, in love with Chico (who has finally arrived), quickly notices the affection of the two. She gives Euridice the gold-colored costume she sewed for herself and makes sure that Euridice keeps her incognito . At first only Orfeu knows who is wearing Serafina's costume.

During the fittings, “Death” appears, a man in the costumes of death who is stalking Euridice. She fled her home village before him. Euridice recognizes him and flees in panic. Orfeu puts the stubborn pursuer, ready for a duel with the knife, and drives him to flight. Orfeu and Euridice spend the night together.

Two people lift Euridice's incognito: Mira and “Death”. During the big carnival parade Orfeus is looking for fiancée Handel with Euridice. When the jealous Mira becomes palpable, “death” steps in and prevents the attack on the woman, whom he himself pursues out of hurt love. Euridice manages to escape. She flees to Hermes in the tram depot. Orfeu follows her to protect her. “Death” tracks them down. Euridice tries to hide. She climbs onto the roof of a tram and holds onto the overhead line. At that moment Orfeu reached the depot and switched on the circuit to light it. Euridice is electrocuted.

An ambulance takes Euridice away (“Death” is with us). Orfeu doesn't know where she was taken and looks for her in the emergency rooms and hospitals. An old man in an office building that also houses the missing persons office advises him to inquire about her at a Macumba congregation (a syncretistic religious community) and gives him access to her.

The believers dance in a trance. An old woman speaks in Euridice's voice. Orfeu turns to her, recognizes the mistake and desperately leaves the cultic place. Hermes finds Orfeu lying exhausted on the street. The depot manager declares that he has taken care of all the formalities that would allow Orfeu to bring the body of his beloved from the morgue (morgue) to his home.

Orfeu carries Euridice up through Rio to Babilonia early in the morning. There Mira awaits her fiancé, who appears to be holding her living lover in his arms. Furious with jealousy, she throws a stone at him, which hits him on the head, so that he loses his footing and falls down a steep slope with Euridice's corpse. Orfeu dies. The corpses of lovers are caught by the lance-shaped leaves of an agave.

The end shows how Benedito, who inherited the guitar from Orfeus, “lets the sun rise”. The little friend dances to his studies and declares him the new Orfeu: the story of Orpheus and Eurydice begins again.

backgrounds

The film was shot mainly with Afro-Brazilian amateur actors, some of whom were already known in Brazil, e. B. Breno Mello as a football player for the football club FC Santos . The track and field athlete Adhemar Ferreira da Silva won gold medals in the triple jump in Helsinki and Melbourne.

The film music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá already presents some of the later Bossa Nova classics such as A Felicidade and Manhã de Carnaval . Traditional samba rhythms and chants can also be heard.

The movie poster was designed by Helmuth Ellgaard .

In 1999 a remake was released under the title Orfeu , the soundtrack of which comes from the Brazilian composer and songwriter Caetano Veloso .

In 2005 the documentary Recherche d'Orfeu Negro by René Letzgus and Bernard Tournois was released. The film, which includes interviews with Breno Mello, was presented in Cannes.

Reviews

  • Lexicon of international film : "Marcel Camus' demythologized version of the material is aesthetically very tastefully prepared, but of course gets its charm less from film originality than from the exciting exoticism of the settings and actors."
  • Heyne-Filmlexikon: "Entertaining narrative cinema that creates a wonderful balance between cheerfulness and melancholy with unobtrusive dramaturgy and congenially used Brazilian music."

Awards

The film was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959 , as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 1960 .

literature

  • Hardy Fredricksmeyer: Black Orpheus, Myth and Ritual: A Morphological Reading. In: International Journal of the Classical Tradition. Vol. 14, No. 1/2, summer 2007, pp. 148-175.
  • Rahul Hamid: Orfeu Negro (1959). In: Steven Jay Schneider (Ed.): 1001 films. Edition Olms, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-283-00497-8 , p. 366.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Melchior: Orfeu Negro .
  2. ^ Teatro. Orfeu da Conceição. Tragédia carioca em três atos. ( Memento of September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (original text of the three-act)
  3. ↑ also Orfeo; the Portuguese names are used here
  4. ↑ Portuguese: hill
  5. ↑ in the mythology Aristaios , who persecutes Eurydice
  6. ↑ in the film reception it is often claimed that he wanted to kill Euridice, but the film does not provide any clear evidence of this
  7. ↑ Not only messengers of the gods, but also guides of the underworld
  8. ↑ in the myth, Eurydice dies from a snakebite while fleeing from Aristaios - in the film from the “bite” of a high-voltage line
  9. ↑ in the myth the maenads stone him to death
  10. ↑ in mythology Eurydice is a tree nymph
  11. ↑ Uwe Hendeler: Orfeu Negru .
  12. ↑ Orfeu Negro. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 4, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used