The 1960 Oscar winner for Best Foreign picture was Black Orpheus, in which a French director, Marcel Camus, restaged the Greek Myth of Orpheus & Eurydice in Rio de Janeiro at the height of carnival. In his account of the period, Tropical Truth, the Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso records his reaction to the film: ‘I laughed along with the entire audience and together we were shamed by the shameless lack of authenticity the filmmaker had permitted himself for the sake of creating a fascinating piece of exoticism… The fascination, however, worked for foreigners… when we arrived in London in 1969, the recording executives, hippies and intellectuals we met, all, without exception, would refer enthusiastically to Black Orpheus as soon as they heard we were Brazilians.’

I read this passage to a perceptive Scot recently and received the succinct response; ‘Oh, so it’s the Brazilian Braveheart’. The shame, the exoticism, the enthusiastic foreigners; it was all too familiar. Memories of the modest travels the perceptive Scot and I have undertaken are full of Braveheart enthusiasts.

At a Bilbao fiesta once we saw a clan of about twenty local Bravehearts. Presumably they felt the woad and tartan worked not just as a symbol of good-humoured boozing but also as an expression of solidarity with other victims of centralising governments’ historical brutalities. Discussing this possibility wasn’t really practical at the time. This was one of those ‘Present the Scot to the Bravehearts, Bask in the reflected glory, Find another bar’ moments. Although I did take a second to savour my gratitude that any fans of Red Road or Breaking The Waves had opted to keep their appreciation of joyless Caledonian sex off the streets.

Of course there are differences between Black Orpheus and Braveheart. For one thing, Braveheart has a more complex relation to reality. In Black Orpheus, the sight of Death capering over some rocks in his skeleton leotard is enough to dispel the notion that this is Rio’s Bicycle Thieves. The other main difference is that the music in Black Orpheus is brilliant. Veloso and his fellow Brazilians abroad could respond to the enthusiasm they encountered by singing some of the soundtrack’s highlights, for the Perceptive Scot there is no such option. We considered miming some of the key scenes but this has proved confusing and occasionally depressing. I expect the rape scene would go down well with Lars von Trier if we’d met him but unfortunately we never have. Hopefully, one day, Mel Gibson will spot the missed opportunity; Braveheart the musical. I’m from Essex and I love the idea.

CJ Magnet

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