1959 - it gets better ...

1959 is the year that just keeps on giving. I had long considered it - and 1962 - as about the best movie years ever, both with at least 25 essential movies. (1960 isn't too bad either, as per my posts on it, and that whole era 1957 to 1963, which happily co-incided with my teenage years movie-going covering that essential era. (I was first taken to the cinema aged 8 in 1954, and went with my family in '55 and '56 and started my own cinemagoing aged 11 in 1957, so was 13 in 1959 ... (kids could safely go to the movies on their own then in small-town Ireland).

So, 1959 - I have listed before all those major American movies, there were some British too, but that New Wave that hit France and Italy and that new American cinema also went as far as Russia and Brazil ...

I recently discovered those 2 '59 Russian classics BALLAD OF A SOLDIER and THE LETTER THAT WAS NOT SENT as per post below - to add to that Italian discovery: Bolognini's LA NOTTE BRAVA, and Clement's restored PLEIN SOLEIL, fabulous on Blu-ray. Now it is Brazil's ORFEU NEGRO - BLACK ORPHEUS.

I had known about this movie of course but never seen it till now. We are about to be hit with a hurricane here in England, so this is the ideal movie for a wet, windy afternoon - as our clocks are about to go back an hour. 

ORFEU NEGRO is directed by Marcel Camus, shot in 1959 Rio at Carnival - music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Louis Bonfa, and with lyrics by  Vinicius de Moraes- names we know from the Bossa Nova explosion of the Sixties (and Lelouch's film UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME). I have several Jobim albums, he worked with so many greats including Sinatra - and of course we adore that "Girl from Ipanema" ... the films begins with that classic song "Felicidate".....

Rio looks great here, as Camus re-tells the Orpheus and Eurydice myth ... with so many great characters: Serafina, Eurydice's friend, and the bitchy Mira who Orpheus keeps trying to escape from. He (Breno Mello) is a happy bus conductor who plays guitar (and he looks great in that little gold outfit) and his fans are those two delightful kids who follow him around. 

Rio and that favella looks marvellous here, with the little goat, the doves, the animals and all those happy people .... but there is that dark strain too as Death follows Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) and stalks her through the carnival .... can our lovers be together at the end, maybe only in death ? Sugar Loaf mountain looks great in the distance with that statute of Christ the Redeemer on top, as our young kids dance on .... ORFEO NEGRO was of course a huge hit on the arthouse circuit like that year's JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY  (jazz label), and will continue to cheer us.

1959 in a nutshell, more at 1959 label: BEN HUR, SOLOMON & SHEBA, SOME LIKE IT HOT, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, ON THE BEACH, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, THE NUN'S STORY. NORTH BY NORTHWEST, RIO BRAVO, IMITATION OF LIFE, A SUMMER PLACE, PILLOW TALK, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, GIDGET, ROOM AT THE TOP, BLIND DATE, EXPRESSO BONGO, I'M ALRIGHT JACK, LOOK BACK IN ANGER, THE 400 BLOWS, LES DRAGUERS, LA LOI, BALLAD OF A SOLDIER, THE LETTER THAT WAS NOT SENT, PLEIN SOLEIL, LA NOTTE BRAVA, PICKPOCKET, LES COUSINS, HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, BLACK ORPHEUS, and programmers like JET STORM, SOS PACIFIC, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, THE JOURNEY, westerns like THESE THOUSAND HILLS, WARLOCK. LAST TRAIN FROM GUNHILL, THE HANGING TREE, YELLOWSTONE KELLY; adventures like THEY CAME TO CORDURA, NORTHWEST FRONTIER, TIGER BAY, THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, THE WIND CANNOT READ, LIBEL and those peplums like HERCULES UNCHAINED. A great time to be movie-going entering one's teens! 
And too in 1959 Antonioni was filming L'AVVENTURA on that island, one of those key movies, like PSYCHO, which ushered in the 60s ....

The French hit Rio in 1964 with De Broca's delightful THAT MAN FROM RIO (L'HOMME DE RIO) with Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac dancing on the beach and having all kinds of adventures - its one of my favourites, as per Belmondo, Dorleac labels ... and the 2009 0SS 117: LOST IN RIO is a screaa, as per my review: 2000s label.