04 Santos (jr/t) 11/7/03 9:39 am Page 49
The Brazilian Remake of the Orpheus Legend: Film Theory and the Aesthetic Dimension
Myrian Sepúlveda dos Santos
Films and other forms of visual experience have become central issues for investigation in contemporary societies. From Simmel’s emphasis on the precedence of visual experience in modern life to more recent explorations of new media of communication and entertainment, figural forms have been increasingly investigated. In addition, former concerns about hegemonic productions of the cultural industry or manipulative forms of popular leisure have been replaced by investigations that consider the products of the cultural industry in general as signifying practices. This article takes these recent contributions as its point of departure and investigates two Brazilian films that are based on the Greek Orpheus legend. The films are adaptations of the play Orfeu da Conceição, written by the Brazilian poet and songwriter Vinícius de Moraes in 1956. The play reconfigures one of the most cherished myths of Western civilization about the very essence of musicality: the Greek legend of Orpheus. Moraes inter- twined in his play Orpheus’ eternal musical powers, the tragic story of love and passion between Orpheus and Eurydice, and the carnival festivities of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The story is set in a shantytown and on the streets of Rio, which are shown to be inhabited by a mostly black population. Films are marked by elements of the historical periods in which they were created. The two remakes of the play belong to two different historical contexts. In fact, this was the central issue of my earlier investigation of these two films (Santos, 2001). Black Orpheus was made in 1959, when carnival festivities were strongly supported by politicians and were part of a populist construction of national identity. This film presented to a national