Orfeu

I just got back from Orfeu. I wish I could say this movie was good, cause I like Diegues, but it was not. His excellent movie Quilombo sold me on his historical honesty and ability to tell a story. Using the backdrop of Rio and Carival you don't even get a sense of the city and the joy of the Carnival. He uses some shots that show the beauty of the city and intricate scene shots but there just isn't enough. The acting is not good. It was poorly cast. The female roles should have been re-arranged. Mira should have played the "best dancer". The best dancer should have played Euridice and Euridice should have been eliminated and barred from the set. The lead role of Orfeu was decent enough, but he needed much more to play off of. And there was no romance. This was a disappointment.

I was 18 when I became enchanted by all things Brazilian and held a lifelong ambition visit that beautiful country. This admiration of all things brazillian was the result of a visit to a London cinema with an older cousin to see the masterpiece Black Orpheus.

This was a truly magnificent film, based on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, and set among the slum dwellers of Rio at carnival time. I did not see this film again until quite recently when I purchased the DVD. The film retains it's magical qualities after all these years and can be watched over and over again.

While looking for Black Orpheus, I became aware of the modern version Orfeu which I also purchased on DVD. I must say that this film fails miserably on most counts. The characters are wooden, the acting average, and the music can not live with the score of the 1959 film. On top of this the symbolism does not work, and the whole film lacks poetry. I have asked many friends to watch both of these films and the result is unanimous praise for Black Orpheus and a Luke warm reception for Orfeu.

I visited a favela last year and it is true that the modern version is much more true to life, but that misses the point. This is a comparison between a work of art, and a very average remake.

Orfeu Negro for the 90's. Complete with laptops, cell phones and automatic weopons in the hillside ghetto of Rio de Jainero. Visually the movie is great. I especially enjoyed the lead actor playing Orfeo, and the actors playing his mother, father and the teen-ghetto artist Michael. Orfeo and Euridice never quite connect in a powerful way. So emotionally the movie didn't move me as strongly as it might have. I did enjoy watching the Carnival and the music in the film is very nice.

This is one of the worst films I have seen in a long time. The acting was so bad, a better job would have been done by employing a queue of people waiting for a bus ! The script is execrable, dreadful. The direction dire, don't allow the director to control traffic anywhere, there would be a pile up ! What illegal substance was the man on ? Perhaps he got next door's cat to do the work. It would have proved a better result.

This film shows just how good the original, Black Orpheus, is. There is no need to refer to that masterpiece in case the mere mention of Orfeu might tarnish a great work.

I play in a Samba Bateria in Europe and have never been to Brasil so I was interested in the shots of Carnaval. The director seemed to have even taken away some of the magic of that event, so flat was his direction.

The drug dealer 'Lucinho' had the acting talent of a mannequin. He had obviously seen John Travolta in Pulp Fiction and tried to model his distinct lack of ability on Travolta. Well he couldn't even mimic Travolta. Orfeu was like a kid they had just pulled off the street who had been kicking a football about ten minutes earlier. They would have got a better cast if they had enrolled first year drama students in their first week of college; where their tutor was off sick and they had spent the first week in the canteen drinking coffee.

The dialogue and plot line was a joke. In fact this would be one of those films that is so bad while meant to be serious the audience end up falling about laughing. The director wanted to give the story – or lack of it, a feeling of the film City of God; not guns and roses but guns and favelas.

A very attractive girl played 'Mira' – perhaps the one redeeming feature of the film. Euridice acted like a Portuguese au-pair from up-country lost in Manchester.

The ending of the film was so dreadful I can't even bring myself to think about it. It should have been the director who was thrown off the side of a hill.

I noticed that some people from Los Angeles liked the film, perhaps they don't have any quality to measure the film against? Before I watched the film I looked on IMDb and saw that someone from the UK who has had a long interest in Brasil, complained about the film. Perhaps with this accurate appreciation, I should have avoided it; but as they say, you learn more from taking one really bad photograph than from twelve good ones.

I liked this movie. It was very well done and the director was awesome. This history can serve of an example to everybody. Sorry for my terrible English, but this movie was very good. The actuation of the actors was great. I recommend it to the lovers.