...the Brazil of the film is a European fantasy (it was a French-Italian-Brazilian production and director Marcel Camus was French)...but the music is real and so is the talent of the performers...

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 19, 2025

Black Orpheus brings this story into the contemporary world, utilizing the carnival as a metaphor for the supernatural world.

| Nov 21, 2023

Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) is the most imaginative, colorful, and lyric expression of French “new wave-ism” to reach North American screens at this writing.

| Aug 17, 2022

The amiability and sincerity of Marcel Camus are not in question. But then, does being amiable and sincere suffice to make a good film?

| Sep 1, 2021

It is amazingly exciting -- sometimes, with the quick voluptuous beat of the music, and the mad gusto of the costumed dancers, the pace seems unbearable in its speed and passion. There is realism and imagery; fantasy and truth.

| Jul 27, 2021

The picture represents a beautiful and touching concept of the old legend.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 27, 2021

What remains is an arty, empty shell of a picture.

| Jul 27, 2021

A stunning example of ingenuity and art.

| Jul 27, 2021

[Breno Mello and Marpessa] Dawn are exceedingly well chosen to be the romantic principals.

| Jul 27, 2021

The film's surge of emotions, the freshness of the acting -- which doesn't look like acting at all -- and the sensitivity of the direction makes it all into a wild, pagan-like poem, swirling with color and life.

| Jul 27, 2021

The impact then is flat and unmoving: sort of like looking at a home movie of colorful old Brazil.

| Jul 27, 2021

The film is often beautiful, a swirl of color and music and movement almost from first to last.

| Jul 27, 2021

Miss Dawn is a vivid performer who meets a worthy match in Bruno Melo, a noted athlete in Rio. whose amateur standing as an actor is deftly concealed in his passionate Orpheus portrait.

| Jul 27, 2021

[Black Orpheus] is an example of taste in search of a style. It is full of good ideas and moving perceptions... But somehow the film never ignites.

| Jul 27, 2021

Unless you are immune to the fiery pleasures of music and dancing, [Black Orpheus] should grip you firmly.

| Jul 27, 2021

Black Orpheus is a magnificently photographed picture rich in the carnival atmosphere that is its background.

| Jul 26, 2021

The visual excitement here is stunning, and it loads Black Orpheus with a lyric enchantment.

| Jul 26, 2021

Everything is overstated, but from this comes its power; and despite the overstatement much of it is a work of art.

| Jul 26, 2021

The production is a riot of color filmed on the scene with the life and death pattern set in a carnival atmosphere.

| Jul 26, 2021

Marpessa Dawn is a most appealing Eurydice and Breno Mello a gently .guileless Orpheus, and writer Jacques Viot and director Camus have fashioned a deft dramatic triumph.

| Jul 26, 2021