Black OrpheusThis 1959 Cannes Palme d'Or winner recasts the classic Orpheus and Eurydice myth against the excess of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.
Director Marcel Camus ingeniously updates the story, including the inspired reinvention of the underworld as Rio's Bureau of Missing Persons and death himself being a masked killer in a carnivalesque skeletal costume.
The film's soundtrack introduced jazz hipsters to the bossa nova and was a huge influence on artists such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd who covered various numbers featured in the film.
"Primally joyous! If there ever was a movie as rapturously - even solely - about its music, it's this one!" Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
