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Black Orpheus

Original title: Orfeu Negro · Turkish title: Siyah Örfe

“The film that introduced Bossa Nova to the world...”

1959 · 1 h 40 min
Directed by Marcel Camus
DramaMusicalRomance

Cast

Breno Mello Marpessa Dawn Lourdes de Oliveira

Credits

Written by: Jacques Viot

Plot

In Rio de Janeiro at carnival time, a tram conductor and guitarist called Orfeu, who is engaged to Mira, falls in love with Eurydice, a girl who has come to the city to escape a man she fears. Death, in the form of a masked figure, pursues her through the night. Marcel Camus's 1959 film retells the myth of Orpheus in the favelas, with bossa nova music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá, and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Sinekatalog’s take

Marcel Camus's Rio carnival retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice is vivid and intoxicating. Its bossa nova score by Jobim and Bonfá and its colour made it a global hit, even if its view of Brazil is romanticised.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 7.4 / 10 (13,673 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.

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