Black Orpheus

A French-Brazilian-Italian co-production directed by Marcel Camus, Black Orpheus (1959) swept the major prizes of its year, taking the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as a Golden Globe. It relocates the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the hillside favelas of Rio de Janeiro during the frenzy of Carnival.

Shot in saturated colour amid real crowds and processions, the film is carried by its music as much as its images: the soundtrack by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá helped introduce bossa nova to the world, and songs such as Manhã de Carnaval became enduring standards. Camus films the dancing, the costumes and the steep, sunlit streets with a sensuous energy that turns the city itself into a leading character, the myth playing out beneath an ever-present sense of fate.

Its international success made it many viewers' first encounter with Brazilian music and culture, though later Brazilian artists, among them the film-makers of Cinema Novo, would debate its romanticised outsider's gaze. However one weighs that question, its role in the global rise of bossa nova is undeniable, and as pure film-making it remains intoxicating — a Greek tragedy retold in colour, rhythm and song, with an ache of inevitability beneath the celebration that gives the spectacle its lasting power.