Orfeu Negro (aka Black Orpheus) (1959)

Set in Rio de Janeiro during carnival time, a young girl named Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) fleeing a stalker (Adhemar Da Silva) seeks out her cousin (Lea Garcia), who lives in a favela district in the hills of Rio. It is there she falls in love with a streetcar conductor fittingly named Orpheus (Bruno Mello). Based on ORFEU DA CONCEICAO by Vinicius De Moraes and directed by Marcel Camus. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival as well as the Academy Award for foreign language film, its reputation has dimmed somewhat in the ensuing years but it remains an often exhilarating mixture of color, music and romantic fantasy. It was a huge art house hit and it's easy to see why. Rio has always had a certain fascination for U.S. film goers going all the way back to the 1930s and movies like FLYING DOWN TO RIO, CHARLIE CHAN IN RIO, ROAD TO RIO etc., not to mention the popularity of Carmen Miranda. It had connotations of exoticism, primitive rhythms and a certain glamour. Camus' film eschews all that and gives us the flip side, the poverty ridden favela district. Granted, it's a rather romanticized view of poverty (everyone seems happy and content in their poverty) but this is not intended as a realistic view of poverty and its effects (it's not PIXOTE) but a romantic retelling of the Greek legend set in the slums of Rio. It captures the feverish atmosphere of carnival time and the music is exquisite and partly responsible for the bossa nova craze which erupted in the 1960s.