Orphée (1949)

Orphée (1949) aka Orpheus

Orphée, a handsome, famous poet (a ‘national hero,’ even) lately with apparent loss of inspiration and other problems sits at a cafe.
He is not the only one: His writer friend explains that he no longer has anything to say and shows him the work of another which consists of a book of empty pages.
He complains his public hates him and fears he won’t be remembered.

The Princess stops by at the Poet’s Café with Cegeste, her young, very drunk, poet protegee. A brawl starts over his notes. Police intervene and arrest him; and as he tries to get away, he is run over by twin motorcycles.

Orphée is asked to be a witness, and getting into the Princess’ Rolls Royce, he sees that Cegeste is now dead.

As they drive away the landscape turns into its negative image.
Night falls.
They reach an abandoned chalet.
It seems to Orphée he is in a dream.
The Princess takes Orphée to a furnished room and he is served cigarettes and champagne by twin servants.
Cegeste's dead boy is brought back to life again and taken thru a mirror/portal. Orphée attempts to follow thru the mirror but is unable to do it.

He wakes up to a horizontal mirror buried at a sand pit and, very much like traditional tales of faerie, the chalet is now gone.
He finds the Rolls Royce and Heurtebise, its ghostly chauffeur, waiting to take him home.

Back home, Eurydice is upset. Her husband has been missing all night.
The police find no record of a Princess being lodged in any hotel nearby.
Once he gets home Orphée is accosted by a reported, but he refuses to make a statement.

His wife (in the most conventional scene in the movie) wishes to let him know she is pregnant but, despondently, he steps on the baby wear she is knitting.
She thinks he is cheating, but Heurtebise vouches for him, becoming a guardian angel of sorts, taking care of Eurydice, taking Orphée's messages for him and warnings both about various things.

Orphée begins to steal poems from the Rolls Royce radio transmissions, but they are erratic, most of the time it’s only nonsense which comes thru.
He becomes obsessesed with these signals from beyond and begins to ignore his wife.

One can see echoes of this element in movies as disparate as Zeder (1983) or even Reanimator (1985), where obsession with the supernatural causes the protagonist to indirectly, but inevitably cause the death of his fiancé or spouse.

The Princess becomes Orphée’s death (or muse) and travels via his bedroom mirror.

On his way to give a statement to the police, Orphée sees the Princess again. But she disappears and appears again. He is detained by autograph hounds and the Princess gets away.

Orphée is accused of plagiarism and of a possible connection with Cegeste’s death: The phrases coming thru the transmission are recognized as the words of Cegeste.

On her way to see her friend about Orphée, Eurydice is run over by the twin motorcyclists.

The Princess comes again to see Heurtebise.
That trick with the set and doubled actor hidden behind a mirror is used here, (no props to Coppola for unnecessarily using it again in Peggy Sue Got Married.) When Cegeste also comes thru, the special effect still transparent, but seamless.

Death, Cocteau seems to be saying, is the inspiration for art (but more specifically, for his art.)
It’s not just the very personal and abstract matter of poets needing to die in order to be reborn (see Le Sang d'un poète (1932)), but also the fact that Eurydice’s death is what can give poignance to Orphée’s tale.
Without it, he is nothing.
Poets are otherwise interchangeable and simply the conduit for messages coming from beyond.

As it turns out even Death has rules and follows orders herself. She must answer to a bureaucratic, judicial committee.
She has fallen in love with Orphée (…Is Death jealous of the living?)

Orphée ignores a notice of Eurydice’s last moments, and she dies.

Reverse cinematography, used also in Le Sang d'un poète (and spoofed in Top Secret) is more complex and extensive here.
Cocteau also uses simply lighting tricks to generate near subliminal effects such as a black dress turning white. Previously in Le Sang d'un poète he had used color filters to make veins and other textures suddenly appear.

Heurtebise reveals that the Princess is Death, and that she travels thru mirrors (since you can see yourself age, and die, by looking at a mirror,) and he will guide Orphée to the underworld, but Orphée is unable to choose between Death and Eurydice.

Gloves (also used in La Belle et la Bête) are used to travel between worlds; (the watery mirror effect is already improved by eliminating the distracting splash seen in Le Sang d'un poète.)

The couple is allowed to return home with the condition that Orphée can no longer look at Eurydice. He takes it out on her.
Inevitably, he sees her reflection and, as a result, she disappears.

Because of the plagiarism scandal, a mob begins stoning the house.
Orphée is shot and taken away in the Rolls Royce.

Back at the underworld, Cocteau again plays with gravity (effects which, again, are more smooth and successful than in his previous feature.)

Orphée is reunited with his love, Death; and as per Cocteau “the death of a poet requires a sacrifice in order for him to become immortal.”

For this to be so, time must be rewound to the point where he is reunited with a still living Eurydice, both their memories erased of the events of the last days.

The film ends with the Princess and Heurtebise arrested for their transgression (“There is nothing worse in any world.”)

Fin

Revisiting themes from Le Sang d'un poète in a more polished manner and telling his very personal and respectful take on the Orpheus myth set in modern-day France (in a much more conventional way this time around,) Cocteau’s poetic film pulls off a fantasy told in a serious manner that still contains many elements which defy explanation.
But as the Princess states “in truth it would be difficult to understand, even in our world.”

The film seems to make it a point that the poet should be willing to give up earthly love (even if, because of humanity’s physical limitations, he will eventually be unable to) for the sake of his muse and his art.

With Jean Marais, François Périer, María Casares and Marie Déa.

A Classic, not to be missed.