ORPHEE

France, 1950, 95 minutes, Black and white.
Jean Marais, Francois Perrier, Maria Casares, Juliette Greco.
Directed by Jean Cocteau.

Orphee is one of the rare films from poet and artist Jean Cocteau. He made the imaginative and surrealist Blood of a Poet in 1930. After World War Two he made several films including a 1946 Beauty and the Beast. He took up the Orpheus theme in 1950 and was to return to it in 1959 with The Testament of Orphee.

Critics generally agree that Orphee is his cinema masterpiece. He introduces the ancient Greek legend of Orpheus seeking his wife Eurydice in the Underworld. He transfers the action to France after World War Two - although many of his sequences are reminiscent of the war itself, especially the Underworld being the ruins of buildings in Paris and the court where Death is tried seeming like a court assembled during World War Two to judge collaborators. The film also reflects the café life of artists in Paris during the late 40s.

The translation of the myth to his present day is effectively done as Orphee is a famous poet, disliked by a number of people who will later condemn him for the disappearance of another poet and try to kill him. Death appears, driving in a limousine, and kills the young poet and takes him away to resurrect him as one of her assistants. Her other assistant is a student who committed suicide. She is also helped by two leather-jacketed bikers.

Orphee is happily married to Eurydice but is puzzled by his experience of encountering Death, falls in love with Death. She communicates with him through signals in the radio in her car and this leads him to further inspirations. The young student, Heurtebise, becomes enamoured of Eurydice. When Eurydice is killed, Orphee has to go into the Underworld, led by Heurtebise. Death, however, has been tried by a court and found guilty - she makes the decision that Orphee should return to the world with his wife but cannot look at her, otherwise she will disappear.

When Orphee is tormented and actually sees his wife in a mirror, Death has finally to make the decision that she will sacrifice her love for Orphee and all things will be normal. Eurydice, returned to the world, is pregnant and Orphee escapes from the riot outside his house caused by the students blaming him for the poet's death.

The film is able to combine very well the contemporary scene with the mythical elements with black and white photography, atmospheric music, and a sense of magic realism that does not over-emphasise the mythical elements but rather infiltrates them, so to speak, into the ordinariness of the plot. The result is a very poetic film, the re-creation of a legend and a means of interpreting life in post-war France.

1. The work of Jean Cocteau? His visual art? Poetry? Films? His working after World War Two? His collaboration with Jean Marais?

2. The black and white photography, Paris in the late 40s, the café society, homes, the streets, the countryside? The use of ruins for the evocation of the Underworld? The classical musical score and its atmosphere?

3. Cocteau's ability to use the Greek myth, incorporate it into his contemporary world, the touch of magic realism along with realism to give credibility both to the action and characters as well as to the possibility of this dramatising of the myth?

4. The translation of the myth to the present: café society, the celebration of poetry and philosophy, rival poets, the ordinary homes and domestic life, the transition through the water-like mirror to an Underworld evocative of World War Two? The combination of the modern with the ancient for poetic and dramatic and mythological effect?

5. Orphee, Marais' screen presence, age, his frowning and seeming unhappiness? The famous poet, his discussion with the artist, his feeling that he was criticised and disliked? His achievement? His relationship with Eurydice, his love for her? The death of Cegeste, the bikers, the presence of Death, her discussions with him? His fascination, following her to the car? His experience of Death and her resurrection of Cegeste? Heurtebise and his presence, advice? His return home, Heurtebise and his explaining the mirror, Orphee finding it glassed, able then to go into the Underworld? His discovery of the Underworld, Death's presence, the court in its formal suits and hearings? Heurtebise as his guide? The growing infatuation with Death?

6. Eurydice, her love for her husband, her puzzle about his behaviour? Her death? Her going into the Underworld, Orphee coming to get her, Heurtebise and Orphee leading her out, through the mirror, his being forbidden to look at her, his dramatic movement, almost seeing her? Avoiding the mirrors? His growing exasperation, her trying to be tender towards him? To save him? Their love, pressures? Their going into the car, his suddenly seeing her in the mirror and her vanishing? Death allowing her to return, not remembering anything that had happened, her pregnancy and hope for the future?

7. Heurtebise, his background, suicide, at the service of Death? Genial, friendly with Orphee, explaining the mirror to him, demonstrating, taking him into the Underworld? His own infatuation with Eurydice? Leading Orphee and Eurydice out of the Underworld? His trying to help Orphee not look at Eurydice? Back in the Underworld, his declaration of love for Eurydice before the judges? His sacrificing himself along with Death for Orphee and Eurydice to resume their life?

8. Death, her presence and dignity, moving through the café society, her minions on the motorbikes, the death of the young poet, her resurrecting him? Her servants? The infatuation with Orphee, her returning to the Underworld, the judges? Communicating through the radio? Orphee and his going into the Underworld, her declaration of love, his love for her? His return with Eurydice, her sacrificing herself and going to an unknown fate with Heurtebise?

9. Cegeste, the young poet, the rivalry, his death? His involvement in the action, his bewilderment?

10. The judges, their place in the Underworld, judging the dead, judging Death and Heurtebise, their condemnation?

11. The people in the society and their coming by car to Orphee's house, the demonstration, the violence, the arrival of Death's minions, the arrival of the police and people being taken away? Orphee saved?

12. A glimpse of French society, French artistic society, its being in a world of its own, its art and philosophy? The cultivating of this kind of café society after World War Two?