Polymath Jean Cocteau (1899-1963) considered himself primarily a poet and developed an elaborate mythology about The Poet and Death, particularly in a sort of trilogy of films stretching from "Le sang d'un poète" (The Death of the Poet", 1930) through "Orphée" (Orpheus, 1950), to "Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi! (The Testament of Orpheus, or Don't Ask Me 'Why?'", 1960). The early death of his protégé/lover Raymond Radiguet (1903-23) whose flame of genius Cocteau tended for the four decades that followed was central to the mythologizing of the Poet bewitching Death. (Cocteau also had a fascination with going through mirrors and mirrors as chronicling the rush from birth to death: "Mirrors are the doors through which death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life and you'll see death do its work.". And Artur Rimbaud provided the model for the extreme poet silenced young in French literary history.)

Death is personified in "Orpheus" with a whole bureaucracy of agents not wearing hoods and carrying scythes (as in "The Phantom Carriage" (1920), a major inspiration for Death stalking characters in European and American cinema). The most poignant of the personifications are the princess played by María Casares (the daughter of a president of the Spanish Republic whose screen career was almost entirely in projects written and/or directed by Cocteau, including playing Nathalie in "Les enfants terribles", "Les dames du Bois de Boulogne," and  "Le testament d'Orphée."

She picks off a surly, blond poet Jacques Cégeste, embodied by the companion of Cocteau's later years (and adopted son), Edouard Dermithe (who played the early-dying Paul in Les enfants terribles" and would reprise the role of Cégeste in "Testament of Orpheus), whose absent-mindedness irritates her. Far more competent and resourceful an assistant (first seen as her chauffeur) is Heurtebise, played with melancholy grace by François Périer (Gervaise, Le Samourai, Z).

The Princess of Death falls in love with the poet Orpheus (Jean Marais, Cocteau's companion and the star (beast/prince) of his greatest film "La belle et la bête" (1946), Heurtebise with his tolerant, sensible, neglected (and pregnant) wife Eurydice (Marie Déa, Les visiteurs du soir). Both get in trouble for exceeding their orders/authority, taking Eurydice into the kingdom of death before her allotted time. They are authorized to let Orpheus come into the realm of death and lead her back to life. But as in the classic tale of the singer too fascinated with his art to notice his wife's loss, the return to life is contingent on his not looking at her. Cocteau's Orpheus gets his Eurydice all the way back, and after repeated warnings of the dangers of mirrors, glimpses her in the rear-view mirror of the Rolls Royce that Heurtebise drove in the early part of the movie. In the middle the radio intoned gnomic (or surrealistic) messages from Jean Cocteau (ostensibly written and broadcast by Cégeste). The Princess tells Orpheus, "Sleeping or awake, the dreamer must accept his dreams."

There are also hunky motorcycle policeman/assassins under orders from the Princess (they run down first Cégeste, then Eurydice) who know as little about the rationales for orders they follow than policemen know of why the Minister of Justice of France orders what he does, according to Cocteau, and a glazier wandering about who I'm sure caught Cocteau's eye. (And whom I link to the bully Dargelos from The White Book and Les enfants terrible.)

Cocteau was frequently criticized for providing a surfeit of symbols. In an interview with André Fragineau, Cocteau expressed his dismay that the public "wants a meaning for everything—especially for things whose beauty consists in not having any. People symbolize through a passion for logic. For lack of any direct meaning, they make up indirect ones, and reassure themselves by using symbols. With 'Orphée' I avoided symbolism and organized a logic of illogicality." Also in a statement included in the liner booklet (of only three pages), Cocteau proclaimed "There is nothing more vulgar than works that set out to prove something. [Orpheus], naturally, avoids even the appearance of trying to prove anything." If you say so, maître! But recurrence of "illogicalities" across a span of thirty years is difficult to accept as arbitrary! Plus using a famous Greek legend in which women eventually tear the poet hero to pieces...

I don't think Cocteau's use of opium accounts for anything in the film. Rather, I would concur with Parker Tyler, who wrote that "Cocteau is second only to Eisenstein as an artist who utilized film intensively to state his own life story in terms of modern and ancient traditions of art and culture, as they are affiliated to the old mystery religion." For affiliation with ancient mystery religion, in fact, I'd accord Cocteau first place. During the 1920s, he consorted with the central figures in neoclassicism (while being anathema to the heterosexist dictator of the surrealists, André Breton). Otherwise the mix of modernist and ancient aspects into a personal collage might be labeled early postmodernism.

Cocteau named and promoted the composers "Les Six." Georges Auric, one whom I am coming to regard as superior to Darius Milhaud, provided an excellent musical score to the movie.

The only extra on the Criterion disc is a bibliofilmography. The image and sound quality are very high. I guess the decision-makers at Criterion thought that packaging the three films together provided sufficient context for viewers, a decision with I do not concur.

That and the conventionality of the "happy ending" make me choose 4 stars for my rating. I've already expressed my preference for "La belle et la bête." I think that my favorite film based on Cocteau writing is Georges Franju's "Thomas l'imposteur" (Thomas, The Impostor, 1964) with another young dreamer cut down (in that instance, within WWI).  During 1950, Cocteau filmed "Un chant d'amour" (1950) for Jean Genet. How involved he was with Jean-Pierre Melville's direction of the adaptation of Les enfants terribles.

The booklength  André Fragineau interview, available in English as Cocteau on Film, goes into considerable detail about how the special effects were achieved on a minuscule budget back in 1950. (The actors were not paid. After winning first prize at the Venice Film Festival, it was a commercial success, so their profit percentage provided material rewards.)

©2009, Stephen O. Murray

Having been underwhelmed with the first three media products from the San Francisco Public Libary about which I've epined around National Library Week for Laura's writeoff, I picked up  the DVD of this film that I had not seen in decades, while perusing the SFPL shelves of French films for the French Finds for Barbara writeoff. My final contribution to that was a review of the 1960 sequel "The Testament of Orpheus" in which Cocteau dispensed with surrogates and took on the role of the poet crossing the borders of life and death himself, with Cégeste as a guide. That film begins by repeating the final scene of "Orpheus." I also went back to 1930 and Cocteau's "Le sang d'un poèt" (Blood of a Poet). Criterion has released the three as the "Orpheus trilogy." "Orpheus" is not really a sequl to "Sang," but Cocteau's fascination with the martyrdom and misunderstanding of artists (poets) is paramount in all three of these films.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD