ORPHÉE

Film Review

In 1949 Cocteau, sixty years old but toujours vert, began to film the screen version of his 1926 play Orphée.

Both Jean Marais and Edouard Dermit appeared in the movie. Marais as Orpheus (the older poet) and Dermit as Cégeste (the younger poet). María Casares, one of Cocteau's favourite actresses, played the Princess (Death).

Cocteau wrote to his English translator, Mary Hoeck, explaining that the moral of Orphée was the engagement of the poet with himself, not with causes or parties. Such intransigence, continued Cocteau, creates chaos in the world, and so in the film Death, although in love with Orpheus, sacrifices her own feelings and allows the poet to remain on earth.

In one scene in the film, at the entrance to the Cafe des Poetes, Dermit/Cégeste comes in as Marais/Orphée goes out. They pause, and Cégeste mutters scornfully at Orphée. That instant on screen is a Coctelian reference to a state of tension that prevailed in the poet's household at the time.

But it also portrays his awareness that by 1949 he was being rejected by the young public, the new generation of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This anxiety is reconfirmed in the film when two of the Bacchantes attack Orpheus. For the Bacchantes' role, Cocteau chose Juliette Greco and Anne-Marie Cazalis from Le Tabou, one of Saint-Germain-des-Prés most famous caves.

The film was shot largely in the ruined buildings of Saint-Cyr, the French West Point, which had been destroyed by the Germans during World War II in the course of aerial bombardment.

Cocteau's innovations abound: Death rides in a magnificent Rolls-Royce (a visual echo of Francine Weisweiller's Bentley) escorted by a sinister motorcycle police; Orpheus is mesmerized by a car radio that repeats coded messages; and one of the trick mirrors used in the film was actually a thousand-pound tub of mercury.

In September of 1950 Orphée won the Prix International de la Critique at the Venice Film Festival, and in 1951 it took First Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

A footnote to the creator's satisfaction was a review by Claude Mauriac finally acclaiming Cocteau as a great filmmaker and writer.

This magical retelling of the Orpheus myth turns the lyre-playing singer of Greek legend into a famous left-bank poet in post-war Paris. Fallen out of favour and lost for poetic inspiration, Orphée becomes obsessed with a mysterious black-clad princess who first claims the life of a rival poet, and then Eurydice, his wife.

With its unforgettable imagery—the dissolving mirror through which characters pass into the next world, the leather-clad, death-dealing motorcyclists, and Cocteau's magical special effects—Orphée is a work of haunting beauty that follows the poetic logic of a dream.

Blu-ray Edition

Poet, playwright, artist and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau was one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century and Orphée his finest work of cinema.

This magical retelling of the Orpheus myth turns the lyre-playing singer of Greek legend into a famous left-bank poet in post-war Paris. Fallen out of favour and lost for poetic inspiration, Orphée becomes obsessed with a mysterious black-clad princess who first claims the life of a rival poet, and then Eurydice, his wife.

With its unforgettable imagery—the dissolving mirror through which characters pass into the next world, the leather-clad, death-dealing motorcyclists, and Cocteau's magical special effects—Orphée is a work of haunting beauty that follows the poetic logic of dream.

Special Features