Orphic Trilogy (The Criterion Collection)
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Actor: Charles Aznavour, Claudine Auger, Jean Cocteau, Lucia Bosé, Yul BrynnerBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Box set, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 225 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-06-27
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of Orphic Trilogy (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Orphic, but not a Trilogy
Summary: 5 Stars
Criterion notwithstanding, this collection of three movies directed by Jean Cocteau is no trilogy. Rather the three works represent three quite different views of the Poet-the prototypic artistic creator for Cocteau--at three different moments in his career. The first, Blood of a Poet (1930) released at the same time as L'Age d'Or of Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali-both pictures were financed by the wealthy patron of the arts, the Vicomte de Noailles-is the most "Orphic" of three, and like L'Age d'Or very much in the vein of French experimental films of the 1920s, with an abundance of symbolism and rejection of conventional narrative syntax. Less radically innovative than L'Age d'Or, Blood of a Poet is like a brilliant book of sketches, some of which work, some of which don't.
Cocteau made no films for over a decade, and only returned to the cinema during the Occupation with The Eternal Return, for which he wrote the screenplay. Although directed by Jean Delannoy, the film was clearly Cocteau's own creation, and marked both the beginning of a period of fertile cinematic collaboration with Jean Marais and a new phase in Cocteau's contributions to film. The masterpiece of this period is, of course, Orpheus (1949). Cocteau had begun in Blood of a Poet by radically breaking with realism. Now he set about showing how the images of modern life could be invested with a mythic power of their own.
In The Eternal Return, Cocteau had put the story of Tristan and Yseult into a modern setting, but without the least hint of irony. In updating the myth of Orpheus to post-World War II Paris, however, he adopted a very different strategy. The Thracian singer becomes a rich and famous writer (Jean Marais) who supplies exactly what the public looks for in literature. At the beginning of the film, Orpheus boasts to an older retired writer, "The public loves me!" And the latter tartly retorts, "The public is alone." But as a result of the unforeseen adventure he lives through in the film, an adventure in which he confronts and falls in love with his own Death (Maria Casares), Orpheus momentarily becomes the Poet he never has been.
Cocteau had placed the myth of the sacrifice of the Poet at the center of Blood of a Poet, and he explicitly articulates it in Orpheus: "The death of a poet requires a sacrifice to make him immortal." However, the "real" Poet, from this point of view, is not Orpheus-who goes back to happily settle down in bourgeois bliss with his expectant wife-but Cegeste (Edouard Dermithe), who becomes the servant of Death, and unquestioningly transmits the messages from the underworld (read: the unconscious). The Poet has to sacrifice himself in order to be more than a writer-"A writer without being a writer," is how he defines the poetic vocation before the Judges of the Underworld-but Orpheus will never have the courage to make that choice by himself.
Not the least astounding thing about Orpheus is the assurance with which Cocteau handles the machinery of commercial film production. Orpheus is hardly a mainstream production by American standards, but it has no ragged edges, technically speaking. The film was strikingly photographed by Nicolas Hayer and it makes a highly adroit use of special effects shots, whose primitive magic Cocteau understood and employed quite effectively. The musical score is by Georges Auric, a member of Les Six who has to rank with Bernard Herrman as one of the major composers of film music in the history of motion pictures. Last but not least, Orpheus has a formidable cast, including-in addition to Jean Marais-François Perier as Heurtebise, Maria Dea as Eurydice, Juliette Greco as her friend Aglaonice, Roger Blin as the older poet, and the sublime Maria Casares as the most glamorous personification of Death ever to appear on the screen.
Viewers will likely have the most difficulty getting into the third movie, The Testament of Orpheus. Cocteau's adieu to the screen is a work filled with spontaneity and invention, so impulsively unstructured as to make Blood of a Poet look like Racinian tragedy. Cocteau plays a traveler lost in time who goes in search of Pallas Athene, but this is a mere pretext for stringing together a series of adventures, like the narrative premise of a picaresque novel. Testament of Orpheus was a movie ahead of its time when it came out 1959, and it remains so today. Possibly its release in DVD may serve to make it known to a wider audience.
Criterion has done itself proud with this set. Anyone inclined to balk might consider that three DVDs of this quality at the price are already a bargain. The picture and sound quality of all three movies, each of which has been digitally remastered, is superb. Blood of a Poet was especially impressive in this respect, and I felt as if I were seeing it for the first time. In addition, The Orphic Trilogy includes a wealth of supplementary material such as essays and pronouncements by Cocteau.
The set also contains two other films en marge of a non-fictional variety. One of these is Villa Santo Sospir, a 16mm picture about the home of Cocteau's neighbor on the Riviera, Mme. Alec Weisweiller, which he had extensively decorated. Mainly a record of art works, Villa Santo Sospir is his only extended work in color. The other, far more interesting, is a documentary about Cocteau's life entitled Autobiography of an Unknown by Edoardo Cozarinsky. Unfortunately, the picture quality is often dupey and unsatisfactory, but the film provides a number of invaluable interviews from the later phase of Cocteau's career.
Anyone who enjoys The Orphic Trilogy should definitely consider purchasing the Criterion DVD of Beauty and the Beast, and the videotapes of The Eternal Return, The Storm Within (Les Parents terribles), and The Strange Ones (Les Enfants terribles), all available from Amazon.com.
Description of Orphic Trilogy (The Criterion Collection)
Decadent, subversive, and bristling with artistic invention, the myth-born cinema of Jean Cocteau disturbs as much as it charms. Cocteau was the most versatile of artists in prewar Paris. Poet, novelist, playwright, painter, celebrity, and maker of cinema-his many talents converged in bold, dreamlike films that continue to enthrall audiences around the world. In The Blood of Poet, Orpheus, and Testament of Orpheus, Cocteau utilizes the Orphic myth to explore the complex relationships between the artist and his creations, reality and the imagination. The Criterion Collection is proud to present the DVD premiere of the Orphic Trilogy in a special limited-edition three-disc box set. Blood of a Poet
"Poets . . . shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls," proclaimed Jean Cocteau of his groundbreaking first film-an exploration of the plight of the artist, the power of metaphor and the relationship between art and dreams. One of cinema's great experiments, this first installment of the Orphic Trilogy stretches the medium to its limits in an effort to capture the poet's obsession with the struggle between the forces of life and death. Criterion is proud to present The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d'un poète).
Orpheus
Jean Cocteau's 1940s update of the Orphic myth depicts Orpheus (Jean Marais), a famous poet scorned by the Left Bank youth, and his love for both his wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) and the mysterious Princess (Maria Casarès). Seeking inspiration, the poet follows the Princess from the world of the living to the land of the deceased through Cocteau's trademark "mirrored portal." As the myth unfolds, the director's visually poetic style pulls the audience into realms both real and imagined in this, the centerpiece to his Orphic Trilogy. Criterion is proud to present Orpheus (Orphée) in a gorgeous new digital transfer.
Testament of Orpheus
In his last film, legendary writer/artist/filmmaker Jean Cocteau portrays an 18th-century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets several symbolic phantoms that bring about his death and resurrection. With an eclectic cast that includes Pablo Picasso, Jean-Pierre Leáud, Jean Marais and Yul Brynner, Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphée) brings full circle the journey Cocteau began in The Blood of a Poet, an exploration of the torturous relationship between the artist and his creations. Criterion is proud to present the last installment of the Orphic Trilogy in a new digital transfer.
The Blood of a Poet
"A realistic documentary of unreal situations" reads the introductory card of Jean Cocteau's debut film, which recalls the work of the silent surrealists (notably Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien Andalou and L'Âge d'Or). Cocteau uses dream imagery to explore poetry, artistic creation, memory, death, and rebirth in four separate fantasy sequences. In the first scene, an artist confronts his creations when they take on a life of their own. In the second, he dives through a mirror (a primitive but startling effect Cocteau refines for Orpheus) and into a skewed hall where every door reveals a fantastic dream scene. The third sequence finds a gang of boys turning a snowball fight into a cruel war, and in the last an audience gathers to witness a dead boy's resurrection amidst a strange card game. These descriptions do little to communicate the poetry of each segment, which rely on creative imagery to create meaning not in stories but in symbols and metaphors. Cocteau's realization is often stiff and stilted, the work of a visual artist transforming still images into an medium that moves through time, but it's never less than beautiful and evocative. Cocteau returned to many of the same themes in Orpheus and The Testament of Orpheus. --Sean Axmaker
Orpheus
A Parisian poet becomes seduced by the prospect of eternal fame in Jean Cocteau's jazzy 1949 update of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus. The café set won't give successful Orpheus (Jean Marais) the time of day, so he obliges when the Princess of Death (Maria Casarés) orders him into her Rolls Royce with her injured young protégé. It isn't long before the poet realizes the commanding Princess is no ordinary benefactor of the arts; for one thing, she can travel through mirrors. The next day, Orpheus returns to his frantic wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) with the kindly chauffeur Heurtibise (François Périer), but remains distracted by the Princess and the cryptic messages from her car radio. The equally smitten Princess eventually takes Eurydice before her time, which results in an underworld trial about her actions. To get his wife back, Orpheus must promise to never to look at his wife, but his heart's not in it. This black-and-white film slyly explores the dark side of the creative urge with panache. Dreamy and mesmerizing, it depicts an underworld not too different from everyday life. With subtitles. --Diane Garrett
The Testament of Orpheus
It is the unique power of the cinema to allow a great many people to dream the same dream together and to present illusion to us as if it were strict reality. It is, in short, an admirable vehicle for poetry." Jean Cocteau, at age 70, thus ruminates on the life and purpose of the creative artist in a poetic essay. Cocteau himself stars as a time-traveling poet bopping helplessly through the ages until an experimental scientist grounds him in a kind of never-never land where he defends himself to the judges of Orpheus, dies, and is resurrected to complete his sentence: "condemned to live." Though the film opens with scenes from Orpheus, the series of symbolic encounters and surreal images more resembles The Blood of a Poet. What's different is his cinematic assurance and sly sense of humor: shot through with jokey gags and playful imagery, the film is less philosophical treatise than career summation by way of farewell party. He's invited fictional characters (most of the cast of Orpheus) and real-life friends (cameos range from Brigitte Bardot to Yul Brynner to Pablo Picasso) from his past and present to send him off to an uncertain future. The new Home Vision video and Criterion DVD releases feature the restored color sequence. Cocteau died in 1963, three years after completing the film. --Sean Axmaker
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