It is raining in Miami.
Nothing unusual at this time of the year.
Moments like this
From unknown places
A song would drift in
I know I am in for some tears
This morning was no different
The song was
Manha de Carnaval
From the movie
Black Orpheus
A French Brazilian production which won Cannes, Golden Globe and Best Foreign Film awards.
Many years later
An adolescent boy
In the suburbs of Melbourne went to see a Matinee
No one in his acquaintance nor himself knew about the movie
He wanted to see it because it was set in Rio de Janeiro
A city whose name he could not pronounce correctly.
For years, as he plodded through many universities and under different skies
He hummed the tune
Manha de Carnival where he had heard the word Coracao for the first time and had fallen in love with that language
It would have been impossible to predict one day he would remember that word
Meu coracao vagabundo, he explained to his friend in Sao Paolo, Brasil
Orfeo Negro
Made me fall in love with life
Then and now
When tender moments appear in my life
As they are now.
From Dali City, from Cologne, from Linz, from Brussels, from Baracoa, from Cochin
It is my theme song
The country is no longer Brazil
But Cuba
But the sentiments are the same
Thank you all the great Brasilian masters who gave us this music
Luis Bonfa, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto and the original singer of this cancao..
Elizete Cardoso
All of them have become immortal
No love story approaches this one for me. The metaphors were to become apparent later. and my respect for Umbanda rituals
I have played this scene a thousand times in my mind and watched it on youtube. I was later to know such sweetness in my own little island, Cuba. That movie was made the same year as the triumph of the Cuban revolution. I wonder what happened to these children of yore ?
I found this incredibly analytic essay on Black Orpheus written by Michael Atkinson on CRITERION in 2010 (as recently as that ? it shows this film would live forever!)
He concludes:
Art isn’t pedagogic about happiness and living, except when it happens to be. And although we could all do a lot worse than to take cues from Bogart’s quietly confident resolve or Greer Garson’s optimistic warmth or even Groucho Marx’s insouciant fearlessness, it is also true that some entire movies can reveal to us ways to conduct our lives, to make them lighter, more energetic, more forward-looking, and simply more pleasurable. In that sense, it’s possible that Black Orpheus may be unchallenged as a cinematic pathfinder to earthly bliss, a simple state of being where we worry about our quotidian trials less and dance a little more.
For the first time today, I followed the song in French
The feelings are the same
It is the vibration of the heart
Not the nationality or the language
That will bring us together
La chanson d'Orphée
Matin, fais lever le soleil
Matin, à l'instant du réveil
Viens tendrement poser
Tes perles de rosée
Sur la nature en fleurs
Chère à mon cœur
Le ciel a choisi mon pays
Pour faire un nouveau paradis
Où loin des tourments
Danse un éternel printemps
Pour les amants
Chante chante mon cœur
La chanson du matin
Dans la joie de la vie qui revient
Matin, fais lever le soleil
Matin, à l'instant du réveil
Mets dans le cœur battant
De celui que j'attends
Un doux rayon d'amour
Beau comme le jour
Afin que son premier soupir
Réponde à mon premier désir
Oui, l'heure est venue
Où chaque baiser perdu
Ne revient plus...
Oui, l'heure est venue
Où chaque baiser perdu
Ne revient plus.
Chante chante mon cœur
La chanson du matin
Dans la joie de la vie qui revient
sung by another immortal singer Dalida from France
when I hear
Le ciel a choisi mon pays
Pour faire un nouveau paradis
Où loin des tourments
Danse un éternel printemps
Pour les amants
how can I not think of CUBA ?
