45. Orpheus

Jean Cocteau, 1950

“I am letting you into the secret of all secrets, mirrors are gates through which death comes and goes.”

The French title of this film is Orphee, with a little dealie bobber over the last e, which I don’t know how to make on my keyboard. Anyway, as that implies, this is a French movie and probably my favorite foreign language film of all time. It is not my favorite foreign film, however, but more on that down the list. Plot wise, this is pretty much a modern update of the Greek myth of Orpheus. Jean Marais, the director’s long-time lover, plays Orphee, a tragically hip poet in postwar France. Before long, Orphee learns that he has caught the attention of The Princess, Death. Why, I am never sure, although I guess he’s kind of hunky. Anyway, The Princess wants Orphee to come live with her in the underworld, a place made up of bombed out ruins and accessible by walking through mirrors in what is a damn neat effect.

The mirror effect isn’t alone, either; this is a damn good looking movie. Jean Cocteau, the director, was a sort of renaissance man, known as a painter, poet, and film maker. It is not surprising then that his films, which include a version of Beauty and the Beast which is supposed to be just spectacular, and Testament of Orpheus, a sort of sequel in which Cocteau himself interacts with his characters, are utterly poetic. Everything flows in these movies and everything is beautiful. What is more: they don’t make a great deal of sense. The plots are often fairly loose, giving way to the more important visual aspect of the film and its philosophical ideas.

Anyway, The Princess eventually gets honked off enough to have her henchmen, a couple of fascist looking, jackbooted motorcyclists, kill and carry off Orphee’s wife, Eurydice. Orphee enters the underworld with the help of Heurtebise, The Princess’s guy Friday or something who secretly loves her. There, Orphee convinces The Princess to let him take Euridyce back to Earth on the condition that Orphee never look at her again. The two spend a while palling around the house before Orphee blows it and looks at her.

So, yeah, it’s kind of a weird plot and a little thin. There’s also this bit where Orphee finds he can tune into these weird coded messages on his car radio that give him the lines to brilliant poems, ostensibly written by a dead rival. Also, it might not be his car, it might be The Princesses. I don’t remember. At any rate, what I’m trying to say is that it’s a really surreal film, but also an easily accessible one. I also really like what it says, symbolically, about the nature of art and creativity and how the artist, be he poet or filmmaker, is always beholden to his art. You see, I tend to look at the Princess as both death and art. She is always there, the ultimate seductress who you can never fully escape and, often, don’t want to. I will say this, though, the film does certainly seem to suggest that death/art is the ultimate lover for the artist, Orphee, and that no mortal woman, Eurydice, can ever be good enough. While that may be, and certainly does seem to be, Cocteau’s belief, I don’t particularly care for it. I’m not one for forsaking the mortal world for art. Rather, I’m much more about the union of the two, using one to enrich the other and always sharing your art with those around you and those you love in particular. Anything else may give you brilliance, I suppose, but it’ll also leave you damn lonely and, I think, seperate you from a rich source of potential inspiration. We all need our muses, after all. Still, it’s one hell of a movie, a beautifully, poetic, modern myth that is well worth the watching.