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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