THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS Review Part II
Edouard Dhermitte, Jean Cocteau in The Testament of Orpheus
Oh my, how poets suffer! It seems that the Orpheus characters, Death (Maria Casarès — who did not age well; she actually resembles Vampira from Plan 9 from Outer Space) and Heurtebise (François Périer), resent being conjured by the magic of a poet, and want to try Cocteau for his sins. Of course, his sin is not sinning, and his sentence is being condemned to live — a wistful thought for the then seventy-year-old Cocteau, whose own real life son Edouard Dhermitte reprises his role as the poet Cégeste from Orpheus.
The whole trial scene plays out like a retarded ‘lost’ episode from the classic 1967 surreal British television series The Prisoner, [...]
by Dan Schneider | December 17, 2006
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Tags: Classic Movies, Criterion Collection, DVDs, Film Reviews, Gay Interest, Jean Cocteau, Le Testament d'Orphée, María Casarès, The Testament of Orpheus
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 [...]
by Dan Schneider | December 17, 2006
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Tags: Classic Movies, Fantasy Movies, Film Reviews, Gay Interest, Jean Cocteau, Le Testament d'Orphée, The Testament of Orpheus
