Day 76: And God Created Woman (1956)

With “And God Created Woman,” director Roger Vadim created a star. Sassy, tan and with a twinkle in her eye, Brigitte Bardot lit up the screen and the hearts of every man with a role that jettisoned her to stardom and made her the world’s first “sex kitten.”

In the film, the vivacious Bardot plays Juliette, an eighteen-year old orphan whose sexually free spirit makes her the constant topic of her town, Saint Tropez, and the target of three specific men’s attractions. The first suitor she finds knocking at her door is Eric Carradine (Curd Jürgens), an older wealthy businessman, who has plans to create a hotel and casino in the coast side town, but has had its construction blocked by, Antoine Tardieu, the eldest son in a family boat building business, who not only refuses to sell Carradine his land, but is the soul desire of Juliette.

But, when Antoine rejects Juliette’s advances for a relationship, the little female firecracker acts out to the point where her guardians decide to send her back to the orphanage, forcing Eric to find a way to keep her in Saint Tropez by any means possible. The answer soon comes in the form of Antoine’s naive younger brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who Juliette agrees to marry to both keep her in town and get back at Antoine. But, when the wedding bells finally ring, the heat of desire rises and all three men find themselves at the will of the beautiful and manipulative Juliette.

With “And God Created Woman,” Brigitte Bardot became the dream girl to a whole male generation, but, while the on screen shenanigans was something to be seen, the behind the scene antics that helped created the film and make its legacy were even spicier. Six years before the film was made, Bardot, then at the young age of fifteen, posed for the cover of the French magazine “Elle” and caught the eye of director Roger Vadim. Soon the two were lovers (Fifteen!) and when she turned eighteen they were married.“She was my wife, my daughter, and my mistress,” Vadim later wrote. For several years Bardot acted in films, performing in several light comedies, and her husband wasn’t pleased with the direction her career had taken. Putting it into his own hands, Vadim hired Bardot for “And God Created Woman,” a film that, he hoped would help launch her career.

Obviously, this became an understatement. When Bardot’s career shot of like a rocket she became the desire of every male on the planet and a few even had their dreams fulfilled, including her “And God Created Woman” co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant who she had a two year affair with. Obviously, Vadim did not enjoy sharing his wife and the two divorced a year later.

In a day and age where Hollywood pops out a new sex symbol every other year for the public to use and abuse, it’s hard to remember a time when there was such a thing as a true Hollywood starlet like Brigitte Bardot and films like “And God Created Woman” that actually showed them as good actresses as well as eye candy. In the end, I think Bob Dylan had it right when he wrote – “Well, my telephone rang it would not stop. It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up. He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, “Brigitte Bardot.”

To learn more about “And God Created Woman,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 75: Brief Encounter (1945)

“Brief Encounter,” directed by David Lean and written by Noel Coward, is a beautifully tragic film that pushed the world into discussing a subject matter it had, till then, hid in the shadows of taboo- infidelity. Though today such a matter is nonchalantly witnessed in a vast majority of films, back in 1945 such a topic was certainly left unspoken until the likes of Coward brought it to the culture’s conscience with his one-act play “Still Life,” which he then adapted into “Brief Encounter.” Though such a controversial topic could have been used for simple shock value, Coward and Lean created a film more interested in discussing the guilt and moral turmoil that can come with the temptation of “true love.”

In the film, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) is a suburban housewife whose life revolves around her dull but affectionate marriage. Though her husband is kind, he is oblivious to Laura’s needs and the only independence she finds comes in from a weekly shopping trip to the town of Milford, where she goes to the cinema by herself and then eats at the train station’s cafe. But one day, as Laura gets a bit of dust in her eye from a passing train, Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), a married consulting doctor in the city, helps brush it out and the two develop a friendship based on their mutual loneliness.

Though, at first, their interactions are innocent and a means to past the time, Laura and Alec soon realize how much they both have in common and a temptation grows with each of their weekly encounters. Soon they kiss and, knowing that a true affair will cost them everything, these forbidden lovers must decide if they can handle the guilt created from their mutual love or if it is all just too much for two people to bare.

With “Brief Encounter,” Lean and Coward developed a film that concerned itself with, above everything else, the moral and societal implications of infidelity and, by doing so, set itself apart from two very distinct lifestyles. When released, “Brief Encounter” was certainly breaking the silence about a topic many had dealt with but few had discussed publicly and the realism found in the actor’s performances were far from the typical film acting fair. These characters seemed genuine and the world they lived in did not stop for musical numbers like so much on the silver screen of that era. Because of this, the film found itself praised by audiences and appreciated for its moral conviction.

But of course, with anything that is popular with a generation, the next may found it out of step and archaic with the current times. By the 1960′s, when the idea of free love was in the air and the philandering James Bonds of cinema were making their way from girl to girl, “Brief Encounter” was deemed irrelevant in a world mixed up in sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Because of the culture shift, the film found itself unfavored by many and it wasn’t till the 1990′s that the film once again resinated with the more conservative culture climate and was universally acclaimed as a true classic.

Now considered one of the greatest films to ever come out of Britain, “Brief Encounter” brings a rich level of pathos and drama to the screen by simply dealing with the guilt and moral turmoil found in all of us- an emotional gold mine that, to this day, Hollywood rarely digs into.

To learn more about “Brief Encounter,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 74: Chasing Amy (1997)

With “Chasing Amy,” writer, director and indie film icon Kevin Smith wrote what he knew. Considered the third film in his New Jersey based “View Askewniverse,” Smith brought together a still relatively unknown Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, as well as Joey Lauren Adams, to bring about a film close to his heart, that, on the surface, discusses the conflict found when sexual orientation interfears with romance, but, on a deeper level, actually speaks on the classic male archetype and how the changing of the times has forced it to adapt.

In the film, Holden McNeil (Affleck) and Banky Edwards (Lee) are collaborating comic book artists and childhood friends whose careers have turned bright after their pot smoking superhero comic, “Bluntman and Chronic” has gained a sizable following. Though everything seems to be going well for the two, Holden soon meets Alyssa Jones (Adams) and, to the chagrin of Banky, falls head over heals for the cute blonde. But, just when Holden thinks he’s met his match, there’s just one small catch- Alyssa is a lesbian.

Unsure of how to act towards her now that she can’t be his, Holden decides to develop a sweet and unusual friendship with Alyssa, only further irking the somewhat homophobic Banky and causing a rift in their working relationship. Soon, simply being Alyssa’s friend just isn’t enough and Holden risks everything by confessing his true feelings. Faced with this new truth, Alyssa will have to decide how much Holden means to her and if the lifestlye she has chosen is the one she really wants to live.

With “Chasing Amy,” director Kevin Smith found himself following both the incredible success of his first film, “Clerks,” and the sophomore slump of his second picture, “Mallrats,” with a more honest and personal story than either of the two. Based on his own past relationship with the film’s lead actress, Joey Lauren Adams, Smith created “Chasing Amy” as an almost cinematic therapy session, using his own past to map out the story and explain what he had learned from his own experience. “Watching this film, the viewer can find me in every nook and cranny,” Smith said in an essay for the film’s Criterion edition, “This flick, more than the other two, is me on a slab, laid out for the world to see. And believe me—that’s scary.”

Adding to his semi-biographical story, Smith put a rather modern twist to the boy loves girl story by having it deal with the topic of sexual orientation. In Adam’s Alyssa we find a strong lesbian protagonist, which, up to this point in cinema, was something close to unthinkable. Obviously, with such a subject matter and the dialogue that goes with it, such a topic would have been unheard of in the earlier days of film, but, with the openness of the late 90′s approaching a new millennium, Smith had found the perfect subject matter for his rude and crude style and was able to turn it into both a funny and poignant piece.

“Chasing Amy” is definitely Kevin Smith at his finest and a milestone both for the presence of LGBT in film and its honest realistic comedy, which would hold influence on a certain Judd Apatow a decade later.

To learn more about, “Chasing Amy,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 73: Vagabond (1985)

“Vagabond,” our second Agnes Varda film of the week, is certainly an excellent companion piece to yesterday’s “Cleo 5 to 7.” Both honest portrayals of women moving towards an uncertain future, “Vagabond” makes its mark by taking the documentary realism found in its predecessor and utilizing it at its most raw. In doing so, Varda gives us a film that bends fiction in a way that allows the audience to, at times, utterly forget that there is a story to be comprehended and, as they instead become engrossed in watching the protagonist react to her surroundings, they stop feeling that its all staged and begin believing completely in the characters that are in front of them.

In “Vagabond,” our tale begins with Mona, a pretty teenage girl, who lies dead in a ditch. Trying to comprehend how she came to her fatal end, those she encountered on her travels across France reminisce about their experiences with her and what sort of impact she had on them. While on the road, Mona met many interesting people. There was the vineyard worker, who showed her kindness only to quickly take it away, a farmer, who gave her a chance at a new life only to have it rejected, and a college professor, who is both annoyed and intrigued by Mona’s lifestyle. With these people and their encounters, the mystery, which is Mona, begins to come together, but possibly not in a way anyone thought.

With “Vagabond,” Varda uses this heightened documentary realism to gives us a better understanding of one of the film’s main themes- independence. In Mona, we find a woman who has decided to abandon the working life of an office and reject the secretary degree she was trying to acquire, preferring, instead, to wander outside the confines of normal society and, by doing so, truly live her own life. She is a rebel in the most honest sense of the term, one running from anything that could be mistaken as “settling down.” In one particular scene, she calls herself a “dropout,” and another vagabond quips, “You’re not a dropout…you’re just out.” This states something very interesting about Mona- even those who live on the farthest fringes of society find her an outcast.

Further heightening the audience interest in Mona, Varda begins the film with her death and draws the filmgoers into watching the puzzle of her life come together through interviews with those who knew her, much in the vein of, as Varda admits, Orson Welles’ classic “Citizen Kane.” “If you tell the story of “Citizen Kane,” Varda once said, “it’s not much of a story. An old rich mogul man is dead. He said a word we don’t understand. We don’t discover so much, just some pieces of his life and finally it is just a sled. Is that a story? It is not much. So what makes “Citizen Kane” so interesting is the way we are told about the man—intriguing us about what people think about him.”

A film who’s influence can be clearly seen in several contemporary films, Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” especially, “Vagabond” continues to be an intriguing character study on the young rebel archetype and how they try to live in a society that now has no borders.

To learn more about “Vagabond,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 72: Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Agnes Varda’s “Cleo from 5 to 7″ concerns itself with the impact time has upon an individual, both in the short span of a few crucial hours and in the framework of a lifetime, while also focusing its lens towards the concept of celebrity, allowing us a window into the life of a person whose fame affects both the way they live and how they look on themselves.

In the film, we follow Cleo (Corinne Marchand) a famous singer who, for an hour and a half, meanders around Paris waiting for the medical results of a possibly fatal biopsy. On edge for the life changing (or ending) news, Cleo meets with a fortune teller, who confirms her worst suspicions- she has cancer and will die soon. Terrified by the prediction and faced with her own mortality, Cleo spends the remainder of her afternoon meeting with those closest to her in an attempt to take her mind off of the ever ticking clock, which will soon reveal her true future.

First, Cleo meets with her assistant and both witness the effect Cleo’s fame has on her ability to live a quiet life as one of her songs play on a nearby jukebox and all eyes fall on Cleo, who would rather be left alone. Next, Cleo goes home to her lavish apartment and encounters both her lover and her song writing team, both who try to cheer her up with little avail as their attitudes are taken as indifference by Cleo and she leaves in them in anger, finding solace instead in the calm landscape of a local city park, where she eventually meets a soldier (Parc Montsouris) on his last day of leave before return to the Algerian war. Finding a common bond through uncertain futures, the two walk together and, eventually, head for the doctor’s office, where Cleo’s results wait to change her life for either better or worse.

A contributor to the early French New Wave movement as well as a member of the small, but famous, “Left Bank Directors” circle, Varda fused aspects of multiple film genres to create “Cleo,” a film that has documentary realism, a few musical pieces, and the essential bare honesty of a New Wave piece. Varda also plays with the concept of “real time cinema” or, in other words, a story that fits in the actual time of the film, in this case, an hour and a half. Though heavily edited to help set the tone of its story and not as faithful to the real time concept as others works, such  as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope,” ”Cleo from 5 to 7″ still uses the technique to heighten even the most mundane moments of Cleo’s life in the film. Though out of context we would simply be watching Cleo sip on a drink in a Paris cafe, in context we see this as possibly her last drink ever and, with this knowledge, we hold more significance for the moment as well as a better understand what Cleo must be thinking as she performs even the simplest of actions. It is with this “real time” technique that we better feel the passing weight of time for Cleo and, though little may be happening, we watch the tension build.

Considered a director whose interest in existentialism runs as a sub-plot in most of her films, Varda does no different with “Cleo” and, in fact, summarizes the film’s entire emotional palate in a surprising single shot. At one point in the film, Cleo is walking down the street and sees two hospital orderlies carrying a small glass incubator that holds a premature infant inside. While those on the street ooh and ahh at the baby and comment on its situation, it is obvious that this scene compacts how Cleo truly feels about her life in a single instant. She is like the child, not fully formed as the person she hopes to be and possibly at death’s door. Her fame also puts her in a glass case to the public, losing her any sense of privacy, and she fears that, like the child in the incubator, the masses will eventually take pity on her.

A subtle, quiet, and, at times, humorous tale, “Cleo from 5 to 7″ is an interesting film both for it’s stab at the real time technique and also it’s study of a woman about to enter a new chapter of her life, which could possibly be her last.

To learn more about “Cleo from 5 to 7,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 71: Le Million (1931)

Rene Clair’s comedic masterpiece “Le Million” is a rousing musical that has become a staple of early popular French cinema as well as a defining landmark in the artistry of early sound in film. At a time where many were still grasping how to technically deal with the new invention of recorded cinema sound, Clair bravely moves into the relatively new technology and begins to form it into something that serves an artistic niche that had yet to be discovered.

In “Le Million,” Michel Bouflette (Rene Lefevre) is an artist with several debts to be paid, but only empty pockets. On the run from his creditors and in trouble with his fiancé Beatrice (Annabella), it looks like Michel’s finally out of options and in deep water, but, suddenly, he finds out that he’s won a lottery worth a million Dutch florins and all he has to do is have his ticket claimed. And there’s the rub. Though the ticket is safely kept in his jacket pocket, his jacket has gone missing after Beatrice gave it to a kind old man, who was running from the police!

With the ticket in the jacket pocket and the jacket anywhere in Paris, Michel and Beatrice find themselves on a madcap rat race to get the ticket before a rival, who was one number away from winning himself, beats them to it. Encountering one upset after the other, this wayward couple will have to journey from the city’s dirty streets all the way to the Paris Opera stage and back again if they ever hope to claim the millions of riches just out of their grasp and, along they way, they just might remember why they fell in love in the first place.

Released in 1931, “Le Million” came out only four years after the “The Jazz Singer,” the first talking picture, but, unlike anyone before, director Rene Clair harnessed this new technology and used it to bring a sense of artistry to sound, helping it to move the story forward, but also bring something contextual to the whole picture. Adapting a popular stage play, Clair did the opposite of what you think a man tackling the new medium of sound would do- he cut most of the dialogue. Seeing sound as something that should enhance a film instead of act as a crutch for poor visual explanation, Clair took many of the play’s best moments and turned them into musical numbers that serve the film both visually and audibly better than simply having character prattle on to one another.

Not only did Clair see early on the dangers of relying too heavily on one aspect of this new two-part film experience, he also was a leader in sound design in film, having sound work for the story in very specific ways that only sound could. For one, “Le Million” has two whole musical numbers that are sung as the characters sit thinking opposed to actually singing. Never done before, this act of sound representing a thought instead of actual spoken words was an entirely new concept to film as obviously such a thing could not been done properly in silent film. Also, in the third act of the film, Clair has several of his characters struggle for possession of the jacket and, as they throw it back and forth to one another, the director replaces their audio with that of a football match, adding not only humor, but an entirely new aspect to the chase, allowing the audience to now seen it as even more of a game than before.

Using sound as a creative tool like no one before, Rene Clair’s “Le Million” is as fun and silly as they day it was released and will remain an optimistic classic about life, love, and riches for generations to come.

To learn more about “Le Million,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 70: The Magic Flute (1975)

In 1791, German composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and libretto writer Emanuel Schikaneder, brought to the city of Vienna “The Magic Flute,” an opera in two acts that quickly became one of the most successful and appreciated works in all of opera history. In 1975, a 184 years after it’s first performance, acclaimed film director Ingmar Bergman brought the story to the big screen, but left it very much with the theatrical style seen in stages all around the world.

In “The Magic Flute,” the curtain opens, literally in this case, on Tamino, a handsome and brave prince, who finds himself pursued by a deadly serpent and without the energy to run from it any longer. Though his fate looks sealed, Tamino is saved by three women, who slay the creature and take him to the Queen of the Night’s castle, where they attend court.

Once there, Tamino meets the goofy Papageno, who catches birds for the Queen and, just as the two form a bond, the Queen herself appears and confides in Tamino a tragic tale. It seems her daughter, the beautiful Pamina, has been taken captive by Sarastro, her sworn enemy, and she needs a hero like Tamino to embark on a journey, with the help of Papageno and a magic flute, to save Pamina from her imprisonment. But, when Tamino and Papageno make it to Sarastro’s prison, it seems the Queen’s story was only a half-truth, for Sarastro is hardly an evil man and is, in fact, Pamina’s very own father! Now, faced with his true love, Tamino will have to conquer three trials to win the heart of Pamina, but only if the Queen of the Night doesn’t destroy their love first.

With “The Magic Flute,” Bergman is wise enough to realize that one of the main reasons the story works so well with audiences is that it makes for a great theatre experience. With that in mind, Bergman gives his audience a theatrical production of the opera shot and edited like a normal film. With this interesting mix, the camera has no trouble pulling in close to show all the anguish in a character’s face or showing the proscenium arch of the theatre and the faces of those in the opera’s audience, who “watch” the film with us.

In fact, at intermission, Bergman goes so far in being candid with the theatre experience that he allows us to go back stage and watch the actors, who are still in costume, smoke, read, and even play chess as they listen to the orchestra warm up and then, once again, play them onto the stage. With this level of theatre atmosphere on film, I’m reminded of Laurence Olivier’s “Henry V,” which, in a similar fashion, began its Shakespeare tale at the Globe theatre and had its actors backstage, preparing to play their specific parts.

Another interesting aspect of the picture, is that Bergman uses the expressions of the opera’s audience to help set the mood for the viewers of the film- having them act like an emotional guide for the story. In fact, one little girl, in particular, is the most focused on of all the theatre goers and there certainly good reasons why. For one, she is Bergman’s grand-daughter and I’m sure it was far more fun for him to film her than any other possible child, but, more importantly, the girl represents the best possible story viewer- innocent in nature and open to new things. While we as adults have been tampered by experience and cynicism, a child is free to be amazed and, by putting her at the helm of setting the audience’s mood, we can enjoy the story as she does- from a child’s untarnished perspective.

“The Magic Flute” is, of course, an opera and, though that may disway the less artistic of film goers, it is certainly a film for everyone, mixing drama, love, and comedy seamlessly together for an experience and story that makes us understand why Mozart and Schikaneder’s tale is still loved today.

To learn more about “The Magic Flute,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 69: The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” is a thought provoking, albeit controversial, take on the biblical journey of Jesus Christ and his inner struggle of being equal parts man and God. While other film depictions of Christ have centered either on his divinity or his sacrifice on the cross, “Last Temptation” takes a different, and at times fictionalized, angle on the tale- discussing more in depth the human part of Christ and the constant anxiety of being without sin, but fully tempted to abandon his ultimate path as the son of God.

In the film, we find Jesus of Nazareth (played with great honesty by Willem Defoe) riddled with a sense that God has a plan for him, but spending his time making crosses for the Roman’s persecution of Jewish revolutionaries. This causes many to consider him a collaborator to the Roman cause and soon a nationalist faction sends Judas Iscariot (Harvey Keitel) to kill him. However, when finally faced with killing his friend, Judas realizes that this son of a carpenter may actually be the Messiah and asks him to lead a new Jewish revolution against the Romans.

Though Jesus has realized God’s ultimate goal for his life, he believes revolution can only come through acts of love, both intriguing and infuriating the people of Israel. Following the story of the Bible, Jesus makes his way from a simple prophet to an activist against the system, always conscious of the temptation, pain, anguish, and uncertainly he feels as a man along the way. Finally, when the time has come, Jesus is put on a cross to be crucified but, in a departure from the known story, a spirit, in the form of a small girl, appears and offers him the choice of dying for God’s cause or living the quiet normal life he has always desired. Faced with this choice, Jesus will have to make the ultimate decision, which will affect not only his life, but the fate of Israel and the whole world.

Not surprisingly, Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” was received much like its very own protagonist- with fear, confusion, and anger. Even at the start of preproduction in 1983, a letter writing campaign began against the film and Paramount Pictures, who was budgeting it at the time, dropped the project, leaving Scorsese without a studio for four more years. Once again funded by Universal and finally in production, the film was released in 1988 and the hate against it grew to a fever pitch as Tim Penland of MasterMedia and Campus Crusade for Christ’s Bill Bright lead a movement declaring that the film depicted “a mentally deranged, lust-driven man who, in a dream sequence, comes down off the cross and has a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene.” So heated was this movement, that they urged Universal to sell them the film’s negative so they could personally destroy it. The clincher? None of the protesters had ever even seen the film.

On the other side of the world, a French Christian fundamentalist group threw molotov cocktails into a movie theater during a screening of the film, injuring nine people and severely burning another four. After the attack, several other theaters around France were hit with graffiti, tear-gas and stink bombs.

Without a doubt, “The Last Temptation of Christ” hit a nerve with the religious of the world and, sadly, they failed to even give it an opportunity to show its genuine attempt to understand the humanity of Jesus. Though the film does take creative licence with the material, it is wise enough to start the film with a disclaimer stating its fictional nature, and, by doing so, it should not have been seen as blasphemous, but rather an experiment in understanding one of the most (if not the most) complex and influential beings in the history of the world.

To learn more about “The Last Temptation of Christ,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 68: Testament of Orpheus (1960)

With “Testament of Orpheus,” Jean Cocteau rounds out his Orphic Trilogy with a story that is one of the most personal a director has ever made- his own. Though hardly a biography picture, “Testament” is instead a visual representation, almost a study, of the avant garde director’s career by way of his own journey through a surrealist world of symbols in search to for the favor of Pallas Athene- the Goddess of Wisdom.

At the beginning of “Testament,” Cocteau, known only as “The Poet” throughout the film, time travels back and forth through the ages until finally meeting a Professor of science, who has created a bullet that travels faster than light. Believing that, if he is shot with the bullet, he will finally be able to break the space-time continuum and return to the real world, the Poet has the Professor shoot him and, sure enough, the Poet is thrown into his own surrealist world.

While traveling in this world, the Poet is met by Cégeste, a character from his acclaimed film “Orpheus,” who leads him, like Virgil guiding Dante in “The Divine Comedy,” through a land that embodies aspects of all art, but with symbols and characters specific to the Poet’s own story. As he continues his journey, the Poet is soon lead by Cégeste to none other than the Princess and her Chauffer, also characters from “Orpheus,” who head of a committee in charge of accusing the Poet with a terrible act- innocence. From here, the poet must continue on his way and hope that, in the end, he will find the wisdom and relief he is searching for through this surreal land.

Once again, Jean Cocteau gives us another film in “Testament of Orpheus” that is as hard to decipher and explain as his previous two installments in the Orphic Trilogy, but, unlike the other two, we are introduced quickly to the concept that this will centered on the famous director and his art and, even in the most perplexing of scenes, we can at least use this bit of information to help analyze what we are witnessing. For example, when the Poet begins to draw a flower that sits in front of him, all he puts on the canvas is a caricature of his own face. Befuddled by this, he turns to Cégeste, who explains that all art created by an artist is simply a representation of themselves- a fact even the least artistic of viewers can understand.

Besides a journey through Cocteau’s artistic life, “Testament” also acts as a visual dirge for Cocteau’s career as a filmmaker, as this, from its inception, was planned as his final piece of work in the artform. In his book “Two Screenplays: The Blood of a Poet and the Testament of Orpheus,” Cocteau said about both his Orphic trilogy and his reasons for quitting film, “My first attempt of this kind was The Blood of a Poet, and that old film is still puzzling people everywhere. Exegesis, which is a Muse, is still examining it, and the psychoanalyst is discovering what the shadowy part of me unknowingly expressed long ago. I later orchestrated this method with the film Orpheus. But, looking back I am convinced that there is quite a considerable public who wish to go beyond the plot and do not try to flee the obscure. On the contrary, they are able to find their way unafraid or else with an adorable childish fear. This is why I am abandoning the career of filmmaker. Technical progress has now brought that career within everyone’s reach. The progress that interests me is of a different, interior kind. And I flatter myself that, thanks to my own long-ago research, I am no longer the only archeologist of my darkness.”

An innovator of surrealism, Jean Cocteau will always go down as one of the most interesting and visionary figures in cinema and his final film is certainly a testament, not of Orpheus, but of his defining artistic skill.

To learn more about “Testament of Orpheus,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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Day 67: Orpheus (1950)

With “Orpheus,” French avant garde director Jean Cocteau delivers the second chapter of his highly acclaimed Orphic Trilogy, but, while still holding onto the style he created in the first film, he now returns, twenty years later, with a more linear story. Based on the classic Greek myth of Orpheus, much like Marcel Camus’s Brazilian take earlier in “The Criterion Summer,” Cocteau gives us an excellent adaptation, mixing the setting of contemporary Paris with the magic found in the mythical beings that roam its streets.

In Cocteau’s version of the ancient tale, Orpheus is a famous poet, who, though loved by the masses, is having trouble impressing the artist elite. Though he strives to write poetry which will interest his peers, he feels completely uninspired and seeks to find a way to grow closer once again to his art form. But then, through the tragic death of Cègeste, a fellow poet, Orpheus encounters a Princess, who brings the deceased artist back to life and walks him into a world on the other side of a common reflecting mirror. A witness to this miraculous feat, Orpheus believes that this world beyond the mirror holds the answer to his inspiration and he won’t stop searching until he finds a way in.

Soon though, tragedy comes to Orpheus’s door as his wife Eurydice, who yearns to tell him of her recent pregnancy with his child, is killed in the same manner as Cègeste and, with the help of Heurtebis, the Princess’s chauffer, Orpheus must make his way beyond the mirror and into a strange and amazing land, where he hopes to encounter both his wife and the Princess once again.

With “Orpheus,” Cocteau does allow for a more story driven plot than his previous chapter in the Orphic Trilogy, “Blood of a Poet,” but this doesn’t mean he believes interpretation should be any easier. For instance, early on in the film, when the Princess revives Cègeste from his death, she asks him if she recognizes her and he says, “Yes, you are my death.” Though this would normally lead us to assume that the Princess is the film’s personification of death, Cocteau won’t even admit to that as he says in his book “The Art of Cinema,” “Among the misconceptions which have been written about Orpheus, I still see Heurtebise described as an angel and the Princess as Death. In the film, there is no Death and no angel. There can be none. Heurtebise is a young Death serving in one of the numerous sub-orders of Death, and the Princess is no more Death than an air hostess is an angel.”

Though Cocteau once again leaves us with a film that we are to experience more than analyze, he does mention in his book that “Orpheus” does have three very specific themes. The first stems from death, something Orpheus is forced to encounter until finally changed by the second theme- immortality. With this, a sacrifice is made for Orpheus to gain never-ending life, but at the cost of something he desires- causing a rather cruel “Catch 22.” Finally, the third theme is directly related to something seen throughout the film- mirrors. Whether we like it or not, mirrors show us as we age and, according to Cocteau, also our own path to death.

Thanks to the use of innovative practical effects, Cocteau’s “Orpheus” holds an amazing dreamlike atmosphere throughout its story and is certainly a landmark in the director’s career as well as one of the most interesting versions of the myth ever put to film.

To learn more about, “Orpheus,” check out Criterion’s page here.

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