ALL tangled up in the madness of a Rio de Janeiro carnival, full of intoxicating samba music, frenzied dancing and violent costumes, the Frenchman Marcel Camus presents us a melancholy tale in his color film, "Black Orpheus" ("Orfeu Negro"), which came to the Plaza yesterday.
It is a tragic story of a Negro chap and a Negro girl who meet at the time of the annual blowout, fall suddenly and rapturously in love, whirl through the night in a furious revel and fall off a cliff in the dawn. At least, the fellow falls off the cliff, holding the dead body of the girl in his arms. She has been killed the previous evening while trying to escape a scoundrel in a skeleton costume.
Brazilian horror icon Jose Mojica Marins explores the drug culture as only he can in this distinctive blend of terror and surrealistic images. A group of leading Brazilian psychiatrists have come together to debate the effects of recreational drugs (particularly LSD, marijuana, and cocaine) on their patients, with noted filmmaker Marins in attendance. As the doctors exchange increasingly bizarre stories -- running from a female college student led into a fatal sexual encounter with a group of pot-smoking bohemians to an older cocaine-addled woman obsessed with miscegenation and bestiality -- one proposes an unusual experiment.
Fun bit of trivia: When the film was submitted to the Brazilian board of censors for the first time, the military dictatorship allowed its exhibition, but prohibited its exportation.
DIR José Mojica Marins
PROD José Mojica Marins
SCR José Mojica Marins, Rubens Francisco Luchetti
DP Giorgio Attili
CAST José Mojica Marins, Cristina Andréia, Oswaldo De Souza, Marisol Marins, Jorge Peres
ED Nilcemar Leyart
MUSIC Solon Curvelo Dr. George Medeiros is a brilliant scientist who spends his nights doing experiments in his laboratory, and does not find time for beautiful wife Rachel. She falls in love with Oliver, the best friend of her husband, and soon after the two plan to kill George and inherit his fortune. When George is distracted in the laboratory, Raquel picks up a bottle marked “acid” and throws it on George’s face, disfiguring it. As he recovers in the hospital, Raquel and Oliver spend all his money. After months in the hospital, Dr. George comes home seemingly with no hostility toward Rachel. –coffinjoe.wikia.com
DIR José Mojica Marins
PROD José Mojica Marins, George Michel Serkeis
SCR José Mojica Marins, Rubens Francisco Luchetti
DP Giorgio Attili
CAST José Mojica Marins, George Michel Serkeis, Vany Miller, Verônica Krimann, Paula Ramos, Íris Bruzzi, Oswaldo De Souza
ED Eduardo Llorente
PROD DES Brutus Martha
MUSIC José Mojica Marins, Herminio Giménez
SOUND Júlio Perez Caballar A triptych explores the dark side. In “The Dollmaker,” when four tough guys set out to rob a dollmaker, they’re sidetracked by his beautiful daughters. While assaulting the women, they discover how the dollmaker gets such life-like eyes in his dolls. In “Obsession,” a lame and destitute balloon man falls in love from afar. When this young woman is murdered, he visits her crypt clutching a pair of her shoes – to dress or undress her? In “Theory,” Professor Oaxiac Odez invites a journalist and his wife to see evidence of the professor’s theory that instinct is more powerful than reason. He locks up his guests for a week of deprivation to see if love can overcome all. —IMDb
DIR Manoel de Oliveira
PROD François d'Artemare, Maria João Mayer, Luis Miñarro
SCR Manoel de Oliveira
DP Sabine Lancelin
CAST Pilar López de Ayala, Ricardo Trêpa, Filipe Vargas, Leonor Silveira, Luís Miguel Cintra, Isabel Ruth, Ana Maria Magalhães
ED Valérie Loiseleux
PROD DES José Pedro Penha, Christian Marti
SOUND Henri Maïkoff
Isaac is a young photographer living in a boarding house in Régua. In the middle of the night, he receives an urgent call from a wealthy family to come and take the last photograph of their daughter, Angelica, who died just a few days after her wedding. Arriving at the house of mourning, Isaac gets his first glimpse of Angelica and is overwhelmed by her beauty. As soon as he looks at her through the lens of his camera, the young woman appears to come back to life just for him. Isaac instantly falls in love with her. From that moment on, Angélica will haunt him night and day, until exhaustion. —Official synopsis
DIR Bruno Barreto
PROD Luiz Carlos Barreto, Newton Rique
SCR Bruno Barreto, Eduardo Coutinho, Leopoldo Serran
DP Murilo Salles
CAST Sônia Braga, José Wilker, Mauro Mendonça, Dinorah Brillanti, Nelson Xavier
ED Raimundo Higino
PROD DES Anisio Medeiros
MUSIC Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Francis Hime
In a small city of Brazil, Flor (a very good looking woman) marries Vadinho, a very handsome and erotic man. Once married she finds he is a good-for-nothing. She works teaching cooking to her neighbours but he takes all her money to gamble. One day he dies. Flor misses the goods of the marriage so she marries again with a very correct gentleman - the owner of the drugstore (Teodoro). Now she's very happy with her man, but misses the erotic moments with her previous husband. Then the ghost of Vadhino comes to earth to chase her.
'Dona Flor' Film On Local Screen
DONA FLOR'S first husband is dead, but that's just as well, since he was a grievous no-goodnik in his lifetime. He was a gambler, a wise guy and a womanizer, and he beat his pretty young wife shamelessly, pacifying her with the occasional moonlight serenade or nice gesture. Once he took her out to a fancy nightclub, where he bought her champagne and caviar and didn't even pinch the waitress.
Apparently, this man's only note-worthy talent was for lovemaking, and "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands," at the Paris Theater, devotes more than enough screen time to that aspect of the marriage. And Dona Flor's second husband, a dopey druggist who drops a medicine bottle the first time he sees the pretty widow, is a sorry successor. So Dona Flor mopes and broods and smiles wanly, until one day her prayers are answered. Husband Number One is such a devil that he manages to come back, sans clothing, and pay his wife amorous visits while Husband Number Two isn't looking. Even if Husband Number Two were looking he wouldn't catch on, because he is slow-witted anyway and because death has conveniently rendered Husband Number One invisible.
This story, adapted from the novel by the Brazilian author Jorge Amado, would seem to have the makings of a bawdy "Topper," and indeed the film's final 20 minutes make reasonably amusing use of the dead man's return. But Bruno Barreto, who directed the film, devotes far more time to setting up the situation than he finally does to exploiting it, and the early part of the film has a dangerously uncertain tone. Dona Flor's life looks terrible, yet this is not a didactic film or even a particularly satirical one, so there's little to be learned from her plight.
There are various glimpses of Bahia and its customs, circa the 1940's, but the only interesting bit of local color is Dona Flor's recipe for crabmeat casserole. Dona Flor teaches a class in gourmet cooking: Husband Number One liked to sit in on the class and, by the by, fondle the students.
Sonia Braga, a Brazilian model and actress who plays Dona Flor, is called upon alternately to frown and to engage in various soft-core shenanigans. She is adequate to these demands, but her role is really little more than that of the butt of a family dirty joke.
