French director Marcel Camus reworks the Orpheus legend among poor blacks in Rio de Janeiro at carnival time; his Orpheus is a streetcar conductor, his Eurydice a country girl who has come to the city for carnaval. In the exhilarating atmosphere of the festival, they meet and fall in love, but Death, in the guise of a persistent suitor in skeleton costume, stalks the girl. In the space of twenty-four hours, the young couple relive the tragic myth. As a precursor of Brazilian new wave films, featuring a cast of non-professionals, and with the vibrant colors, and delirious dance, costumes and music of carnaval, Black Orpheus captures in the slums and bay of Rio a poetic infusion of naturalism and fantasy, classicism and voodoo.