THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS d: Jean Cocteau
Le Testament d’Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi! / The Testament of Orpheus (1960)
Direction and screenplay: Jean Cocteau
Cast: Jean Cocteau, María Casares, François Périer, Henri Crémieux, Edouard Dhermitte, Alice Heyliger, Jean Marais, Françoise Christophe, Claudine Auger, Charles Aznavour, Lucia Bosé, Yul Brynner, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Daniel Gélin, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean-Claude Petit, Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline Roque, Françoise Sagan, Annette Vadim, Brigitte Bardot, Roger Vadim, Françoise Arnoul
Jean Cocteau in The Testament of Orpheus
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
The third film in Jean Cocteau’s "Orphic Trilogy," Le Testament d’Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi! / The Testament of Orpheus, is also the third film in The Criterion Collection’s box set release. While it’s the best of the trio, it’s nowhere near a good film.
True, The Testament of Orpheus does have perhaps the best score and its 80 minutes offer a dozen or so moments that have some spark of creativity, but Cocteau is much too narcissistic and his film much too self-indulgent. For instance, The Testament of Orpheus is replete with outdated special effects — such as Cocteau running film in reverse on numerous occasions — that are almost embarrassing to watch. Additionally, the previous two entries in the trilogy set the bar so low that Cocteau did not really have to do much to improve upon his previous failures.
Despite his claims to the contrary, Cocteau was no poet of stature. His lack of writing skills can be seen in this undeniably dreadful screenplay, loaded with the most clichéd claims about poetry and art, and the most banal and absurd imagery imaginable. Part of the odd charm of the film — and of its predecessors — is that Cocteau really does believe the crap he spews.
At one point in The Testament of Orpheus, he states: ‘It is the unique power of the cinema to allow a great many people to dream the same dream together and to present illusion to us as if it were strict reality. It is, in short, an admirable vehicle for poetry.’ Not only is the sentiment false and highfalutin’, but it’s read by Cocteau with such earnest inanity that one wonders whether he really could believe such tripe and not have to restrain a guffaw.
Whereas someone like a Federico Fellini or Ingmar Bergman could have overt symbolism in their films — think Saraghina in 8½ or the image of Death in The Seventh Seal — those directors used symbolism sparingly and only at moments where it had maximum impact. In addition, the narrative that fills the rest of their films is not awkwardly self-conscious like Cocteau’s. By contrast, Cocteau’s symbolism is so heavy-handed, so obvious, and so manifold that they have little real-world referents so they can be understood by the average viewer. As a result, they lose all symbolic impact, becoming detritus that fills up screen space.
The Testament of Orpheus, Cocteau’s last film, was released in 1960 — about three decades after his first film, Le Sang d’un poète / The Blood of a Poet. One must admit — even if a Cocteauphile — that little advancement was made in the director’s filmmaking techniques. In that sense, Cocteau reminded me of Carl Theodor Dreyer, whose film aesthetic was left stuck in the past when he released his final film, Gertrud, in 1964. The difference between Dreyer and Cocteau, however, was that Dreyer actually made some great films in his youth, while Cocteau was a bad filmmaker all throughout the thirty-year span of his career. Indeed, the fact that Cocteau went from atrocious to merely bad in The Testament of Orpheus is not enough to recommend it, or any of the other films in the trilogy.
The basic premise of The Testament of Orpheus is rather wan. The actors from Orphée / Orpheus, the 1949 middle film of the trilogy, reprise their putative roles — save that they now appear to Cocteau himself, who plays a time-traveling poet from the eighteenth century who, though lost in spacetime, haunts a scientist (Henri Crémieux) over the course of his life. For some reason, the professor has invented faster-than-light bullets in the future, so Cocteau brings them into the past so the professor can shoot him, thus sending him back in time. How all that works is left unexplained, and it does lend a sort of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians patina of scientism to the whole project.
The Testament of Orpheus is likewise filled with ridiculous and grandiose statements about poets having magical or superhuman prowess, fetishizing them as the greatest thinkers and all — even as Cocteau, the self-proclaimed poet, spouts drivel that would embarrass even Maya Angelou, the noted poet-cum-Hallmark greetings-card writer.
Subscribe / Syndicate
2 Comments
Tags: Classic Movies, Fantasy Movies, Film Reviews, Gay Interest, Jean Cocteau, Le Testament d'Orphée, The Testament of Orpheus
Comments
2 Responses to “THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS d: Jean Cocteau”
Leave a Reply
NOTE:
All comments are moderated and may take some time before they are posted. Different views and opinions are welcome, but courtesy is imperative. Rude/crass/bigoted comments and name-calling of any sort will be immediately deleted.
Also, please be aware that the Alternative Film Guide has no contact information for the talent mentioned in this blog and no information pertaining to or access to distributors'/producers' film prints.
I wish to take issue with this writer’s somewhat knee-jerk reaction to ‘The Testament of Orpheus.’
I really don’t understand the writer’s venom towards Cocteau. His influence on other filmmakers and artists has been well-established. I think good evidence of this is actually when Cocteau was running out of funds to finish ‘Testament,’ Francois Truffaut gave him some of the profits from ‘The 400 Blows.’
It is clear that the writer has strong doubts about Cocteau’s merit as either poet or filmmaker. However, the examples which he uses to support his critique seem vague at best.
Barring the fact that these films were all made after ‘Testament,’ I fail to see how ‘The Prisoner’, ‘8 1/2′, and ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ can be held up as superior examples of filmmaking technique or thematic maturity when the writer seems to merely compare plot points rather than form a cohesive argument about why they are.
I’m also somewhat confused about the writer’s consistant citing of 1950’s science fiction. What exactly does Ed Wood have to do with any of this? I’m sure that Cocteau, being an avid cinephile, would probably have liked ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space!’
The writer also criticizes ‘Testament’ for its leaden and overt symbolism as well as out-dated special-effects. I don’t think there is such a thing as inverted symbolism in film; every image contains many obvious symbols designed to point an audience in the right direction. The chess match between the Knight and Death in Bergman’s Seventh Seal is hardly a subtle image. As far as special effects are concerned, what constitutes an effect as out-dated? Reverse photography is the only ‘effect’ used extensively in the film and that’s been a device used throughout the history of cinema.
I have always thought ‘The Testament of Orpheus’ to be a vastly underrated film. Cocteau’s world is distinctly his own and the film has many startling cinematic moments. I think to say it is an artistic sin is equally presumptuous.
Ne me demandez pas pourquoi!
Jean Cocteau was a genius.
The Testament of Orpheus was one of the best, most poetic movies of the era.