The Orphic Trilogy
(Criterion Region 0 NTSC DVD)
(1930/1949/1959)
review by Blackgloves

French poet, artist, writer and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau, surely epitomises the image of the bohemian renaissance man: he was involved in the careers of many of the Twentieth Century's most revered artists, musicians and writers; his publishing house published music scores from the likes of Igor Stravinsky and Erik Satie -- as well as his own writings; and in 1917 he met and formed a lifelong friendship with Pablo Picasso! By the time of his first venture into film in 1930, he'd already led quite an eventful life culminating in a hopeless addiction to opium!

Cocteau created some of his most important works during the period spent recovering from this addiction, the novel "Les Enfants Terribles" and the stage play of "Orphee" among them. A meeting with rich bohemian aristocrats Charles and Marie-Laure de Noaliies during a house party held in 1929, led to his being promised a million francs to finance a film project which became "Le Sange d'un Poete" (The Blood Of A Poet) after the composer Georges Auric (a mutual friend of Cocteau and the Noailles') expressed a desire to write music for an animated film. This first (non-animated) project marked a faltering first step in Cocteau's career as a filmmaker for a variety of reasons, and he did not return to the medium for another fifteen years. But "Le Sange d'un Poete" is also a unique piece of work which represents the first attempt by the artist to create his own individualistic form of film-poetry.

"The Blood Of A Poet" can be seen as having a connection with the nascent surrealist film experiments of Dali and Buñuel: not only were both "L'Age d'Or" and Cocteau's film financed by the Noailles but "The Blood Of A Poet" also exhibits a similar dream-logic construction and bizarre, haunting imagery -- including a talking hand with a mouth in its palm, a statue that comes to life, and a couple playing cards over the body of a child (with one player cheating by drawing a card from the dead child's breast-pocket to improve his hand!). But while Breton and the Surrealists applauded "L'Age d'Or", they derided Cocteau's film! His was a personal voyage into the "soul" of an artist and an examination of the shadowy interiors which make artistic expression possible. It was a theme that Cocteau was to return to periodically throughout his career in film (thus producing the other two films in what became the Orphic trilogy) and it features the primary visual motif of all three: that of mirrors as portals into a mythical underworld which might also be a mirage of the poet's subconscious artistic impulses.

In the film, an artist becomes entwined with one of his paintings when he tries to rub out its mouth, but instead the mouth attaches itself to his own hand! He rubs it off on a statue which promptly comes to life and sends him off on a journey through a mirror and into "The Hotel Of Dramatic Follies" where he observes various bizarre tableaux through the keyholes of several darkened rooms!

Cocteau established a marvellously strange and surreal atmosphere in the film by fabricating some clever and imaginative visual effects. Curiously, despite the fact that it is easy to see how they were achieved, their illusion is still unbelievably vivid and convincing! Instead of using slow-motion, Cocteau made the lead actor's walk seem strange and strained by nailing the sets to the floor and having him drag himself from door-to-door in the corridor of the hotel; a child is made to appear weightless by building the set upside down and turning the camera the other way round to film the scene; and actress Lee Miller's movement is made to look odd by making her walk with her eyes shut with open, staring eyes painted on top of her eyelids! All these effects were later perfected in the other films in the Orphic trilogy along with the "mirror" of mercury which the poet jumps into.

Although Cocteau intended the film to be open to interpretation, a number of autobiographical elements can be discerned including references to a traumatic childhood incident and the suicide of his father. Maybe because of the film's association with the Surrealists through the Viscount Noailles' patronage, it was also seen as being blasphemous at the time (although its hard to see what critics were referring to) and this led Noailles to suppress it for a number of years -- since, despite the fact that the surrealists hated "The Blood Of A Poet", a lot of the controversy surrounding "L'Age d'Or" also seemed to get attached to it. Viewed seventy-five years later though, the film still seems a wonderfully evocative experiment in transference of the poetic sensibility to film; "an hour spent in another world" as one audience member said to Cocteau when the film was first shown.

The Criterion disc features as good a print as can be expected, but the original negative has not been looked after, and is full of lines which appear nearly all the way through. The transfer is nice and sharp though and the soundtrack largely free of noise. Extras include a gallery of behind the scenes stills taken during the making of the film; a text essay of a lecture given by Cocteau at the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier in 1932; and an hour long film -- "Jean Cocteau: Autobiography Of An Unknown Artist".

The next fifteen years were rather fallow artistically for Cocteau, and his film making career didn't get going again until 1945 with the beautiful "La Belle et la Bete" which starred his friend Jean Marais as the beast of the title. Marais had become a big matinee idol in France after starring in "Eternal Return" in 1943 for which Cocteau wrote the screenplay. In 1949 Marais took the lead role again for Cocteau in a film which was to return to the themes of "The Blood Of A Poet" but in the form of a mythical fable set in post-war France: the enchanting "Orpheus" takes as its starting point the Greek myth of the poet and singer whose captivating songs entranced the people of Thrace in ancient Greece.

In Cocteau's reworking of the story, the popular french poet Orpheus (Jean Marais) gets into an altercation with one of the rebellious younger generation of poets who dismiss him as part of the establishment. The dispute spills out of the trendy coffee house that the poets often frequent and into the street, where Cegeste (Edouard Dermithe), a poet much admired by the young generation, falls and is run down and killed by two mysterious motorcyclists. A well-dressed woman in black (Maria Casares) -- a princess who is also Cegeste's patron -- removes the body in her limousine and signals Orpheus to join them. Once out of the city, they are joined by the two motorcyclists who killed Cegeste, and it appears that Orpheus has fallen foul of a supernatural kidnap plan! In an abandoned Chateau, Cegeste is brought back to life by the Princess whom he must now serve. Orpheus catches all of them disappearing through a mirror, but cannot himself follow. He wakes up in the countryside where he finds Heurtebise (Francois Perier), the Princesses chauffeur, who tells Orpheus that he has been assigned to take him home. Back at his house, Orpheus sends away the Mayor and Aglaonice (Juliette Greco): leader of the feared "League of Women", who bitterly opposes Orpheus despite being his wife's best friend. Orpheus then becomes obsessed with the poetic messages he can only find broadcast on the radio of the princesses limousine. So preoccupied is he that he completely neglects his loving wife, Eurydice (Marie Dea) who is pregnant with their first child. Unknown to Orpheus, the Princess is really the human form of his own death! When she breaks the rules of the underworld and causes Eurydice to die, Orpheus and Heurtebise follow her to hell by entering the bedroom mirror, in a quest to rescue her and for Orpheus to confront his own death!

This time, Cocteau took the esoteric concerns of "The Blood Of The Poet" and made a timeless classic of cinema out of them, which is equally as accessible to mainstream audiences as it is to the art house crowd. The film is by turns mysterious, comical, lyrical and poignant and fully exploits all of the cinema's armoury of seductive tricks for its own ends: the glossy photography of Nicolas Hayer and the beguiling camera effects which are here more compelling than ever; the wonderful interplay between the ensemble cast; the film star good-looks of lantern-jawed Jean Marais; and the darkly captivating beauty of Maria Casares. Add to this Cocteau's beguilingly literate screenplay -- full of scintillating dialogue and finely-honed poetic allusions -- and the result is a film which remains as fresh and intoxicating today as it was when it was first released.

One of the most striking things about the film is the way that the fantastical, supernatural elements of the story enter into the plot through the most prosaic of means. The most obvious example is the mirror which stands as a gateway into the underworld, for which Cocteau assembled many tricks including a $1000 tub of mercury; but also an ordinary pair of rubber gloves which endow the ability to pass through mirrors, and the messages from the underworld which are broadcast -- via a World War II transmitter -- over a car radio! This timeless fable is still deeply rooted in its post-war milieu: the underworld sequences were filmed in the ruined buildings of Saint-Cyr, which had been destroyed by arial bombardment during the war, while the cryptic messages from the underworld evoke the secret radio transmissions of the resistance. The film's chief concerns though are with the competing demands on the artist's loyalties as he struggles to remain true to his vision while not neglecting earthly responsibilities. Many of Coctaeu's experiences and anxieties are reflected in the story, especially his difficult relationship with other french intellectuals of the time such as the surrealists and the existentialists; but, ultimately, "Orpheus" is a fantastical love story which can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of their knowledge of its background influences.

The Criterion DVD of "Orpheus" sports a fine transfer: sharp and vivid and with good black levels. There are no real extras other than a text essay by Cocteau, discussing the film, which is included with the packaging.

Ten years later and, after deciding that he would leave the film medium behind him, Cocteau was persuaded to return to the form of his first film "The Blood Of A Poet", and to revisit its themes in a manner informed by his own life and career after discovering that "Blood..." was still being shown and appreciated thirty years after its creation. In fact, Francois Truffaut, the new film's main financier, thought of it as a sequel to "The Blood Of A Poet", while the appearance of four of the actors and three of the characters from "Orpheus" tied it to that film as well, and give it its place as the last in a trilogy of connected films.

Although "The Testament Of Orpheus" starts out as a fantastical light comedy set outside the bounds of space and time, Cocteau quickly abandons the easily digestible narrative structure of "Orpheus" in favour of a kind of film-making which attempts to capture a stream of consciousness on celluloid. Although full of imagination and sporting a similarly glossy photographic style, the film did not have the commercial appeal of its predecessor and was dismissed as self-indulgent by many contemporary critics. It's easy to see why it would fall foul of these criticisms: with Cocteau starring as himself in the main role with many of his friends -- such as Pablo Picasso and Yul Brynner -- making cameo appearances, the film could easily be dismissed as the kind of thing that could only be of interest to people who are even more interested in Jean Cocteau than he was in himself! But despite being closely allied to the other two films in the trilogy (to such an extent that it would be pointless watching if you were not already familiar with them), it is still quite distinct and remains mostly light-hearted in its approach.

An artist (who for some reason is dressed as Louis the XIV!) is trapped in space-time -- and the only way he can be freed is to contact a scientist who has invented a special powder which can make faster-than-light bullets endowed with "magical" powers! His blundering efforts to meet this man result in him accidentally influencing the scientist's entire life -- he is even responsible for him being dropped on his head as a baby after the artist materialises in front of his mother! Eventually the artist manages to get some faster-than-light bullets from the scientist just before the old man dies -- and he takes them back in time to the scientist's younger self, at a time when he is wondering whether it is worth continuing with his research. The artist has the scientist shoot him with one of the bullets -- which has the effect of reincarnating him as Jean Cocteau!

Cocteau then leaves and encounters a horse-headed man on the French coast who leads him to a group of gypsies who conjure up a picture of the actor Edouard Dermithe in the role of Cegeste in Cocteau's film "Orpheus". Cocteau throws the pieces of the picture into the sea which causes the character of Cegeste to enter the real world. This character, who had been condemned to the dead-zone between Hell and Earth at the end of "Orpheus", now leads the artist on a dreamlike journey through the French landscape which is now populated with his own creations and friends & acquaintances from his life.

Once more, a beautiful score from Georges Auric compliments some arresting imagery and poetic language but this time things get a bit bogged down in dialogue halfway through, when Cocteau is judged by the self same characters he'd had judged in "Orpheus": The princess (Maria Casares) and Heurtebise (Francois Perier). This novel scene soon starts to wear thin as it goes on and on for far to long. Maria Casares's features have grown much harsher since she'd last played the role ten years previously -- despite the attempts to recreate her as she was in "Orpheus" -- and the character of Heurtebise seems much more bad-tempered and intolerant than previously. We learn that their punishment for their transgressions in "Orpheus" was to be made into two of the Underworld's stodgy judges!

Cocteau's wish was to make a film unconstrained by commercial needs which was to be purely "a machine for making meanings". He described himself as: "a cabinet maker, not a medium" -- a role he assigned to the audience, who could conjure up any interpretation they liked from the images. With its slow, dreamy pace and wordy exchanges "The Testament Of Orpheus" risks lulling the viewer into a half-sleep in-which his/her own dreams become mixed with the imagery from the film, but its most powerful scenes are as good as anything Cocteau had ever devised and remain compelling forty-five years later.

The transfer of "The Testament Of Orpheus" is practically flawless with an ultra-sharp image and good black levels. The sound is also generally excellent although it does distort on a few occasions. The extras on the disc consist of a long text essay on the film and a 16 mm film of the villa Santo Sospier, shot by Cocteau and featuring many of the locations used for "Testament Of Orpheus".

Criterion give us three fine discs of three compelling movies made by one of the Twentieth Century's most vital artists and film makers. Rather than provoke or upset the audience, Cocteau always sort to delight the senses and energise the mind with his lyrical works; he was the father of the French New Wave and is rediscovered today as one of the cinema's prime exponents of fantasy and fable. This set is highly worth seeking out.