Black Orpheus:
Dancing in the Streets
By August 18, 2010
Before Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus showed up on American and European screens in 1959, what would later be known as the “art film” came in only a few Read more »
- France
- 1959
- 107 minutes
- Color
- 1.33:1
- Portuguese
- Spine #48
SYNOPSIS: Winner of both the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus (Orfeu negro) brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was an international cultural event, and it kicked off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Orfeu | Breno Mello |
| Eurídice | Marpessa Dawn |
| Mira | Lourdes de Oliveira |
| Serafina | Léa Garcia |
| Death | Adhemar Feirrera da Silva |
| Chico | Waldetar de Souza |
| Hermes | Alexandre Constantino |
| Benedito | Jorge dos Santos |
| Zeca | Aurino Cassiano |
| Little Girl | Maria Alice |
Credits
| Director | Marcel Camus |
| Producer | Sacha Gordine |
| Inspired by the play by | Vinicius de Moraes |
| Adaptation and dialogue | Jacques Viot and Marcel Camus |
| Music | Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfá |
| Director of photography | Jean Bourgoin |
| Editing | Andrée Feix |
| Cameramen | Louis Stein and René Persin |
| Sound engineer | Amaury Leenhardt |
| Assistant director | Robert Mazoyer |
| Costume design | Isabel Pons |
| Production manager | Jacques Gibault |
| Production assistance | Silvio Autuori and Roger Blache |
Disc Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Archival interviews with director Marcel Camus and actress Marpessa Dawn
- New video interviews with Brazilian cinema scholar Robert Stam, jazz historian Gary Giddins, and Brazilian author Ruy Castro
- Looking for “Black Orpheus,” a French documentary about Black Orpheus’s cultural and musical roots and its resonance in Brazil today
- Theatrical trailer
- Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Atkinson
From the CurrentView the Current »
Film Essays
Black Orpheus:
Black Orpheus
By June 07, 1999
From the moment of its first appearance, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959—where it won the Palme d’Or—it was clear that Black Orpheus was a very special film. Taking the ancient Read more »
