Black Orpheus (1959): Marcel Camus’ Foreign-Language Film Oscar (Reel/Real Impact; Brazil)

Black Orpheus
Original poster

This was the second film made by Marcel Camus. Viewers related to the film’s grand CinemaScope cinematography by Jean Bourgoin, colorful sets and costumes, and above all, the exciting music, composed by Brazil’s jazz greats, Luis Bonfa and Antonio Carlos.

Black Orpheus was cited by Jean-Michel Basquiat as one of his early musical influences.

President Barack Obama notes in his memoir “Dreams from My Father” (1995) that it was his mother’s favorite film. Obama, however, did not share his mother’s views upon first watching the film during his years at Columbia University: “I suddenly realized that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad’s dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different.”

A feast to the eyes and ears, the film’s soundtrack also inspired Vince Guaraldi’s 1962 album “Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus.”

Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) claimed that as a boy he watched the film on Korean TV, and that it made a big impact on him.

In the same year, the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) honored The 400 Blows, New Wave Francois Truffaut’s stunning debut, with their Best Foreign Language Film.