March 21, 2001

      Today in class we talked about how filmmakers can take an original story

and remake it into a film.  Black Orpheus is a story or myth about the love

story between Orpheus and Eurydice.  Orpheus goes on a journey to retrieve

his wife, Eurydice, from the underworld.  He is a singer/poet, and he

travels to the underworld and convinces Hates with his songs and poetry to

send his wife back to the living.

      We also gathered into groups then discussed the questions about Black

Orpheus.

1.    How does Marcel Camus transfer the myth of Orpheus and Eurdice to film?

-     The film adds the engagement of Orpheus and a town set in a modern time.

-     The setting was changed from Greece to Brazilian settings and culture.  It

tells a love story amidst poverty that shows emotional contrast.

2.    What role does carnival play in the film?

-     The carnival is a celebration of Brazilian culture, and it is a part of

the story.

-      Carnival is part of the poor.  To feel rich and wealthy the town spends

all their money and possessions for costumes.  It allows the acceptation of

the unacceptable, or the impossible possible. (e.g. The poor being rich)

-     The carnival is a distraction.  There is a lot of chaos and confusion.  It

allows the affair between Orpheus and Eurdice to happen.

3.      Describe Camus’s use of colors.

-     There are a lot of bright, happy colors that represent the carnival.

There is a lot of yellow and gold that represent the sun god, Apollo.

-     Death is the only one wearing black and white.  It is a contrast between

good (white) and evil (black).  In many films, Death is neutral.  But here he is depicted as evil, as a stalker who wants to kill Eurydice. 

-      Eurydice is wearing all white in the beginning of the film representing

good and innocence.

4.      Describe Camus’s use of music.

-     The music is vibrant, lively, and upbeat.  It represents Brazilian

culture.

-     The music presents a false sense of hope that everything is going to be

all right.

-     The music continues after Orpheus and Eurydice have died, showing the life

cycle how everything has to go on.

-      Orpheus was a musician in the myth, so his role is shown when he plays his

guitar.

5.      Compare Camus’s film with Jean Cocteau’s Orfee.  What are the

similarities and differences in the story?  What are the similarities and

differences in the way the story is told?

-     The two stories are represented in two different margins of society.

Orfee takes place in the French intellectual class, while Black Orpheus

takes place in a poor Brazilian town.

-     Black Orpheus is comparing poor and rich while Orfee is comparing nice and

mean.

-     Orfee is produced using creative experimentation, rather than a

straightforward story.  Cocteau uses visuals to create mythical images.

-     The films contrast between reality and fantasy.  In Black Orpheus, the

myth does not change, but it does not hold any mythical powers.  Everything

in the film is explainable, and could happen in reality.  In Orfee nothing

is explainable such as the actual journey to another world.  The strange

sounds coming from the radio in the Rolls Royce is totally unexplainable.

6.    Are you familiar with any other versions of the story Orpheus and

Eurydice?

      Some suggestions were:

-     Little Mermaid – Ariel falls in love because of a sailor’s music.  He is

human, and unattainable.  They both travel into each other’s world to be

with each other.

-     Romeo and Juliet

-     The Labyrinth – a girl has to go back to get her little brother from a

strange world.

7.    Why do you think this myth holds such power over the imagination?

-     The myth explains things that humans cannot such as religion, and fate.

-     It takes away the finality of death; it shows there is life after death.

It shows that there is a possibility of no death.

-     The myth shows that we can be in love and cannot be torn apart.

-     Death and love are powerful together.

      We then watched a clip from the film Nobody Loves Me, a 1996 German film by Doris

Dorrie.  The film showed a connection between love and death.  It did not

contain the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, but it had an idea of a carnival and

uses the name Orpheus.  It is about a woman who wants to fall in love, and

who is also obsessed with death.  She is about to turn 30 years old, and is

worried about the statistic that says that women older than 30 have a grater

chance of being hit by a car than getting married.  In one scene, she is

buried alive then dug up and therefore is “reborn.”  There is a sample of

black magic when Orpheus is eating broth with somebody’s picture in it, he

is supposed to forget about him or her completely.

We also watched a segment of Oz that explained a version of the myth Orpheus

and Eurydice.

FORL 3160