Orphee 1950 ****

As with La Belle et le Bete, Jean Cocteau’s masterpieces will not grow old; while specific meanings remain obscure, this adaptation of the classic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has a timeless quality. Jean Maris was actor so handsome and robust he makes Kirk Douglas look as weedy as Tom Holland, and he’s ideal as Orphee, a vain poet who leaves his wife behind to visit a fashionable road-side café to hear a recital. There he meets a rival named Cegeste (Edouard Dermit) and when a brawl breaks out, sees him killed and then revived by a mysterious woman who appears to be working for the forces of the underworld, specifically Death (Maria Casares). With his head spinning, Orpheus returns home, but soon loses his wife to the underworld, and must venture forth to get her back. Cocteau’s bag of cinematic tricks gets a good work-out here, with backwards film, inverted negatives, mirrors made of water and talking cars all adding up to a magical environment where anything could and will happen; the most obvious films that lift both mood and iconography from Cocteau are the first two Matrix films. Although made in post WWII France, Orphee is no simple political allegory, and Cocteau was keen to avoid such interpretations; the film’s meaning is, according to Cocteau, exactly what you see. The journey of Orpheus represents the creative process, one that takes away as much as it gives, and the ambiguous ending leaves the viewer to make their own conclusions and judgements without the dots being joined by the film-maker. Perhaps Cocteau’s sequel. Le Testament d’Orphee spells things out too clearly, but this sublime original offers mystery and magic in gloopy, rich black and white images that feel like the fevered opium dream of their esteemed creator.