This film has a wonderful reputation and is regarded as a classic, so when I got a copy of the film I was expecting something amazing. And, by the time it was complete, I felt like I just didn't get it--why was this film so highly regarded? Perhaps most of the reason this film left me so cold was that Jean Cocteau's version of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was so much better--with amazing camera work and acting. On the other hand, "Orfeu Negro" just seemed to have one thing going for it--its intense Samba score. The problem is that after a short time I wanted the music to stop!! The viewing experience was like having ADHD and taking crack--it was just so hyper-kinetic it made me want to scream. As for the story, it sure seemed a lot more superficial--they dance and dance and Orfeu falls for Eurydice so easily--with no real character development or even build up. The citizens of Rio all seem like mindless children--dancing their lives away--a rather patronizing view of the nation! And, because of this, I can see why the Brazilians disliked this one-dimensional view the film gave of them.

As I said, I just don't get this film--it didn't do much to satisfy me and I will strongly suggest to my friends they see Cocteau's version instead--it seems much closer to the original source material and is just so much more interesting.

There is no hesitation in admitting that this is a new version of the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But throw in the music as a magical component. The Antonio Carlos Jobim track is all over the place. It's at time almost operatic in its storytelling. We have all the components: the title character and his unfortunate love, the evil woman who directs fate, the Hades figure, and the theme of rebirth. It seems at times a bit dated and the fact that because it's Carnival people seem to dance and sing twenty-four hours a day (possibly in their sleep) takes us away from a sense of reality. But then, it's still a mythological story. A very important film which has withstood the test of time.

Acclaimed when it was made -- except in Brazil --this movie won the Best Foreign Picture Oscar. There's a lot to admire about it, from the music to the performances to the striking camerawork around Sugarloaf. I'm left, however, with a major conundrum: does this attempt to show that the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice are universal by showing it can happen anywhere the primitive religious impulse (i.e., not French) holds sway, if only for the day of Carnival? If so, does it succeed?

There's a word I'm searching for, the technical term for when the supernatural or magical elements of a legend are removed, and some natural method is used, instead... I encountered it with a watered-down version of the Ring of Gyges. In this version, the guy did not use a ring to turn himself invisible. He simply hid, and cut his foe's throat after he had had fallen asleep. Hermeneutical? No, that's not it. Well, I'll think of it or re-encounter it one of these days.

So we have a movie in which the shape of the story remains that of the myth I first encountered more than half a century ago in Bullfinch, but with the supernatural elements absent.

Yet by removing these supernatural elements, is there anything wonderful left in the story of Orpheus? There's a tram conductor named Orpheus who has convinced the local children that his guitar playing makes the sun rise, a girl named Eurydice who dies. There's also a tram driver named Hermes and a watch dog named Cerberus, but so what? There's nothing wonderful here. Even the scene where he comes to a ceremony where a woman is possessed by the Holy spirit is filmed like an intruder, peering over the shoulder of watching people, with an anthropologist's cold eye. It's not magical realism, it's not poetic realism. It's the inverse of both of those.

Yet it is the very nature of the Orpheus and Eurydice legend that their love -- and by extension, my love or your love, anyone's love -- has a objectively real meaning to the universe. Without it, it's the story of a guy who met a girl and they fell in love, and she died. How sad.

Yawn.