Like the enraptured Beauty in the astonishing chateau of the Beast, the hot-tempered but art-besotted Orpheus succumbs to the temptations and wonders before him. With the help of the very obliging Heurtebise (played by Perier, later one of Melville‘s ambiguous film noir flics, with an almost constant expression of worried concern), Orpheus keeps moving back and forth between his own happy home, and the gateway to the land of Death. He also becomes obsessed with the mysterious poetic messages that keep emanating from The Princess‘ car radio. Example: “The bird sings with its fingers.”

Eventually the myth kicks in. Eurydice falls into Death’s hands, and Orpheus must try to rescue her. But there’s a twist. In the interim, Orpheus has fallen in love with the Princess of Death, and Heurtebise has fallen for Eurydice. Death’s shadow government, which meets round a corporate table and acts like a partisan tribunal, is not amused.

Orpheus has the kind of script few truly mercenary producers would dare to back. (The film, by the way, was a hit.) But, like Beauty and the Beast, which had the young Rene Clement as Cocteau’s “technical” director, it benefits richly from all the technical brilliance the studio system could lavish on its projects. Orpheus’ cinematography, by Nicholas Hayer, is alternately bright and rich (in the world of the da) and drenched in shadows (in the underworld of death). The technical tricks, which often involve reverse or slow motion (or both), black and white negative images, and at one point, a set that has literally been built tipped to the side, so that Orpheus and Heurtebise can crawl along the walls like voyagers in a dream — are ingenious and amusing. They aptly fit Cocteau’s artistic credo “Astonish me.”

Then there are the mirrors. They are Cocteau’s favorite symbol, and his narcissism is reflected in them. Orpheus gazes at himself in it, and often, like Lewis Carroll‘s Alice, passes into and through the trick mirror surface that ripples like water. In Orpheus, the mirror in the home of the Princess, is passageway to the underworld of Death. The implication is clear. When we gaze into a mirror, we are watching our own death at work. (Cocteau, never one to waste a symbol, said of the cinema that it was the only art that could show death at work.)

Orpheus is the second film in what came to be known as Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy, a gallery comprising his 1930 surrealist gem Blood of a Poet, Orpheus (1950) and his last and most obviously personal film, Testament of Orpheus (1959). (Criterion has them all in an Orphic Trilogy box set.)

All three of these films are about Cocteau and they are all in a way, segments of his dream autobiography. But he only appears, as himself, in the last, Testament of Orpheus. In the second, Cocteau‘s surrogate, Orpheus, is played by his ex-lover (and one of France‘s matinee idols of the ‘40s and ‘50s) Marais — while Cocteau‘s then-current lover, Dermithe, plays Cegeste. In the third, Testament of Orpheus (sections of which appear in some of this DVD’s special features), Cocteau finally plays himself: a birdlike man with frizzy hair, expressive fingers, a wary expression and a very recognizable face.

Of all the great directors and cinema stylists who flourished in the years between World War II and the New Wave — including geniuses like Renoir, Ophuls and Bresson — Cocteau is the one probably still most fondly remembered by the public. And that’s because he made himself a public figure, and because he never forgot to be an entertainer as well as an artist. Orpheus, like Blood of a Poet, and along with Bunuel and Dali’s 1928 Un Chien Andalou, was for years regarded as a high point of cinematic art and experimentation. But it has its pop side as well. It’s constructed somewhat like a thriller and a movie romance, and it makes ample use of some of the visual clichés of both, as well as the visual archetypes of the myths Cocteau borrows. But Cocteau makes the mix work, precisely because he was a dilettante of genius. Orpheus, his myth for the ’50s, and forever, still amuses us, still entertains us, still astonishes us. (In French, with English subtitles.)

All films below are in French, with English subtitles.

Also includes: La Villa Santo-Sospir (France: Jean Cocteau, 1951) Three and a Half Stars. Cocteau’s dazzling color tour of the villa whose walls and doors he decorated with paintings, and the nearby church he adorned as well, shot in the deliberately bare bones 16mm style he recommended to young filmmakers. Narrated by Cocteau. 

Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown (France: Edgardo Cozarinsky, 1984) Three Stars. A fine Cocteau portrait by prime cinematic chronicler Cozarinsky. 

Other Extras: Commentary by French-film historian James S. Williams; Featurette: Jean Cocteau and His Tricks (France: Marc Caro, 2008) Informative interview by Caro with Cocteau’s assistant director Claude Pinoteau; Interview with Cocteau on French TV show “In Search of Jazz” (1956); TV Interview “40 Minutes with Jean Cocteau”; Photo gallery by Roger Corbeau; Newsreel footage of Saint-Cyr academy; Trailer; Booklet with article excerpt by Cocteau and essays by Williams and Mark Polizzotti.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•