754 THE SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
Orpheus sounds like Savior, he wears a snake-skin jacket to attest to his under-
world connections, and he is devoted to his guitar, "a life-long companion."
The Brazilian Black Orpheus (1959), directed by Marcel Camus, with a re-
lentless but compelling musical score by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfa,
which sets the myth in Rio at carnival time, has deservedly won critical acclaim
and popularity. Indeed, it attests to the universal humanity of the myth that tran-
scends race, color, locale, and time. Also from Brazil comes Orfeu, directed by
Carlos Diegues, about the love of a famous musician, with an added milieu of
drugs and gangs and its own arresting soundtrack by Caetano Veloso. Both
movies are based upon the play by the Brazilian Vinicius de Moraes. Also, every-
one should experience more than once the exciting and evocative Orphée (1949)
of Jean Cocteau, a landmark in the history of the cinema. He reshapes the myth
in a setting in Paris on the Left Bank in the 1940s. This Orpheus is in love with
Death, named The Princess, and his entrance to the Underworld is through a
mirror. Cocteau's obsession with the Orphic archetype appears in his last movie,
Le Testament d'Orphée (1959), which offers plenty of mythological allusion. Along
with these two, his first movie (1930), The Blood of a Poet, which explores themes
of artistic creation, poetry, death, and rebirth in sequences of dreamlike imagery,
makes up what may be called Cocteau's Orphic trilogy. The DVD release of this
trilogy includes many priceless bonuses, including transcripts of Cocteau's in-
sightful essays for each movie and two illuminating documentaries. Mirrors,
through which we see the ravages of time, and the stealthy approach of death
are recurrent images reflecting his fascination with death and the interplay of
dreams and reality.VARIOUS THEMES
The legend of Perseus has received imaginative and entertaining treatment in
Clash of the Titans (1981), with a star-studded cast including Harry Hamlin, Lau-
rence Olivier, and Maggie Smith. Despite its misleading title, this movie has
many strengths that have not always been justly appreciated, among them a
chilling decapitation of Medusa (imaginatively set in the Underworld),^63 an ex-
hilarating depiction of the flying horse Pegasus, and the addition of Bubo, a me-
chanical owl straight out of science fiction. Special effects are by Ray Harry-
hausen (who surpasses his splendid work for Jason and the Argonauts), and the
stirring music is by Laurence Rosenthal. Not in the same class is The Gorgon, a
horror vehicle for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. For those interested in
the humorous, the historic movie of Max Reinhardt's production of Shake-
speare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) has James Cagney as Pyramus and
Joe E. Brown as Thisbe and may be compared to a more recent version (1968)
with a stellar British cast. In Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), an elderly Chinese man
in a circus (Tony Randall) is a master of disguises who gives us a vision of
Medusa and Pan. Time Bandits (1981) has as one of its sequences an episode with