I remembered being underwhelmed by the last film made by Jean Cocteau, "Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi! (The Testament of Orpheus, or don't ask why, 1960). Although it begins with the splicing in of the last scene of "Orpheus" (1950), it is really necessary to have seen (and remember!) "Orpheus" to make any sense at all of "Testament."

The Princess (María Casares) and Heurtebise (François Périer) officials of some rank in the domain of the dead are being led off to be tried for the crime of falling in love with living people at the end of Orpheus, leaving the recently taken poet Jaques Cégeste (Edouard Dermithe, Cocteau's boy toy, whom he adopted) alone and confused.

All three of the main dead characters from "Orpheus" return along with more leather-clad motorcycle cops (albeit different ones). Cocteau not only provides narration, as he did for "Le sang d'un poète" and (I think) all his subsequent films, but is in front of the camera through the entire movie. Cégeste says with some contempt that Cocteau is a maser of phoenixology. Cocteau killed off at least four versions of himself (poets/artists) in "Sang" and Orpheus famously invaded the realm of death to bring back.

Jean Marais (Cocteau's earlier lover) returned, though as the self-blinded Oedipus rather than Orpheus. There are cameos by, among others, Yul Brynner, Pablo Picasso, Brigitte Bardot, and Françoise Sagan.

Cégeste rises from the sea (the Mediterranean) dramatically to give the aged (70) poet (Cocteau) a hibiscus flower that will be resurrected at least three times, the last time a metamorphosis of Cocteau's identity papers that one of the motorcycle cops has demanded. (The poet assumes they have come to run him down, as they did Cégeste and Eurydice in "Orpheus," but they are just suspicious of a pedestrian on the road between Nice and Monaco.)

In the turgid middle of the movie, Cégeste and Cocteau appear at an inquest conducted by the Princess and Heurtebise. The punishment of the latter pair decreed between the movies was to become judges. They question Cégeste's right to give Cocteau the hibiscus blossom and Cocteau's to keep attempting to cross the border of human life (in poetry including his films, and, perhaps with opium, though there is no explicit mention of that). The Princess sentences him to return to life. Heurtebise comments (consoles?) that at his age, this is not a lengthy sentence.

I haven't told everything of the plot, insofar as there is one. I couldn't explain why Oedipus and his daughter Antigone appear, or why Cocteau wanders into a group of gypsies twice or why he is speared after being sentenced to life. The French subtitle, says "Don't ask why" and who am I to defy that instruction? There is also a time travel bit involving Cocteau in 18th-century costume with a physicist (Henri Cremieux)at two different times of his life. (A sci-fi subplot yawner...)

Cocteau paraded some of his personal mythology (even Dargelos, shows up again) with a heavy overlay (or underlay?) of ancient Greek mythology. I said of "Le sang de un poète" that it straddled surrealism and neoclassicism. Neoclassicism predominates in all three parts of the "Orpheus trilogy" stretched across three decades. I find "Testament" the least interesting of the three, though I now have a pleasure of recognition that I didn't have before last year: recognizing the lighthouse on Cap Ferrat and the harbor of Villefranche (near the cape).

The Criterion remastered print is quite good, both sound and visual. The neoclassical music is less interesting than Georges Auric's scores for "Sang" and "Orpheus," alas.

The major DVD extra is a 1952 16mm "home movie" ("Testament" is not that far from being a "home movie" of Cocteau IMO) of La Villa Santo Sospir, that Cocteau remodeled for a friend, and which is a location used in "Testament." He shows paintings done by both Edouard Dermithe and Jean Marais and his own Villefranche villa and his own artwork (drawings, paintings, tapestries).

Again, I am puzzled by "Compared to what?" in deciding if this movie is above or below average. Cocteau enjoyed himself, and did just fine as an actor playing a myth-obsessed poet revisiting earlier themes with familiar "actors" (Casares and Dermithe appeared almost exclusively in works directed by and/or based on Cocteau works). I consider "Testament" inferior to other Cocteau works, and if it had not been Cocteau's cinematic swan song, I don't think it would be remembered, let alone restored. The trilogy deserves 4 stars, Criterion's product 5 stars. For those not interested in Cocteau or the history of "experimental films," both "Sang" and "Testament" are 2-star movies. Since I gave the earlier one a 4-star rating and continue to be sure that "average" is something Cocteau would have hated to be judged to have produced, I am "evening" out the judgments I've made by rating this 2-star. It is better than Antonioni's adaptation of ""L'aigle à deux têtes" (as "The Mystery of Oberwald"—Cocteau directed Marais in a better version of that) but inferior to both adaptations of "La voix humaine," Franju's of Thomas, l'imposteur, Melville's of Les enfants terribles, Cocteau's own "Orphée" and "La belle et le bête."

©2009, Stephen O. Murray

This is my final French find for Barbara Fields, who died one month ago today and is sorely missed hereon.

Recommended:
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