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Orphée (1950)
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Jean Cocteau's updating of the Orpheus myth to post-Liberation Paris is one of cinema's great artistic masterpieces, a piece of Méliès-like magic that is intensely powerful and moving even at its most bewildering. Jean Marais plays the poet who falls in love with Death (Maria Casarès); her assistant, the angel Heurtebise (François Périer), snatches the poet's wife and forces him to enter the underworld to get her back. The use of images, especially the looking-glass that turns into water, is still daring and — it might be said — rich in gay iconography. When Cocteau showed his financiers his script, they said: “If an unknown young man submitted such a script to us, we'd throw him out.” Said Cocteau later: “This terrible sentence seems to sum up the sole advantage of having a reputation. For the rest, I had to proceed exactly as though I was a newcomer.” In 1960, Cocteau made a sequel, Le Testament d'Orphée. AT
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Running time
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90min
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Country of origin
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Fr
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Genre
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Fantasy
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Original language
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French
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Screenplay
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Jean Cocteau
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Theatrical distributor
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BFI
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UK cinema certificate
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PG
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UK cinema release date
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March 2004
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Subtitling information
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In French with subtitles
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Award |
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Nominee/Winner |
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| BFAA 1950 |
Best Film from any Source |
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Nominee |
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Film certification logos reproduced by kind permission of BBFC |
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