Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Kirpianuscus not poetic. only poetry. with deep roots in magic, proposing fields of questions, fascinating, reflecting the looking for real essence of reality by Jean Cocteau who propose a Jean Marais in his top of career. the love is its root and this is so obvious in each scene. and it is key for define it as a trip more than a movie. because large circle of feelings are ingredients of this story, so well known than becomes here total new. a film about yourself. that is "Orpheus". and a long trip in the heart of reality.

dlee2012 This work, arguably Cocteau's finest, transposes the Orpheus myth to a contemporary (though dream-like) setting. Poetry, surrealism and classical mythology blend in an effective and often subtle way as Orpheus struggles to renounce his fixation with Death and reclaim Eurydice from her realm.Notions of what constitutes poetry are questioned throughout. In an inspired move, Cocteau has Orpheus take notes from a "Numbers Station", hinting at the post-War world's obsessive questioning of what actually constitutes art and the paranoia of the emerging Cold War. The character of Orpheus may actually be read to represent a secret agent, rescuing Eurydice from the mysterious realm behind what had just been coined "The Iron Curtain." Death, a doyen of this realm faces trial for treason by a panel of her peers, perhaps a representation of the show trials of the late Stalinist period. Orpheus' infatuation with death is perhaps also a reflection of the mentality of a Cold War spy's coldly murderous ethos. Orpheus' poetry may likewise be as vacuous and ephemeral as the clash of ideologies that prompted the War. Notably, it is when he is denounced as a plagiarist that his infatuation with Death grows, to the point where he no longer cares about Death's opposite, the new life his wife is carrying. He is too blinkered by ideology to see that the child represents the hope of a post-Communist and post-Capitalist future.Entering the mirror world (representing the ideology that is the opposite of his own), Orpheus is presented with a stagnant world of ruins and bureaucrats working to their own agendas, as if time has stood still at the end of the Second World War. This contrasts the relaxed, sun-drenched land of cafés and large modern automobiles in his reality. The numbers stations have entranced him and it is across, into the world of the opposing, "dead" ideology that he enters.Death's helpers are represented as motorcycle police, the very embodiment of the authority of the State and the ideology it represents.As thoughtful as this film is, it has its weaknesses, mostly of a technical nature. Of course, the special effects are primitive to the point of being laughable by today's standards and Marais' acting is weak. Casares does give a fascinating but uneven performance as Death. The films pace also falters at times, undermining the poetic mood that had been so carefully established.Whilst most viewers today will the idea of someone so ruthless and evil as a Cold War spy (of any faction) being presented as a hero to be morally repugnant, particularly in this case as it represents the undermining of the poetic ideal, one must note that Orpheus eventually rejects his infatuation with death and obsession with poetry and returns rescues his wife and child. This, then, can be read, if we follow the allegory to its conclusion, as a rejection of the twin ideologies of Communism and Capitalism and instead looking to a post-ideology future and the traditional values of the family instead of those imposed by either the State or the lure of wealth and fame.

Hitchcoc It's too bad that Cocteau's filmography is so short. In this film as well as Beauty and the Beast, there is so much visual delight that it makes one ask for more. Now granted this is a strange period historically, the post-war fifties with the beatnik milieu. It seems a bit dated now, especially the bad boy motorcycle guys, and that satanic council, but it still creates a world of great interest. The whole thing about poetry trumping everything is really interesting. The man sitting in the old Rolls, listening to the strange events on the radio as his accident-victim wife is breathing her last, this obsessiveness of the artist at all costs, plays pretty well. There are a couple of weaknesses. The woman representing death is rather dull, her presence is black but not the kind of black that launches fear. Also, apparently there is a hierarchy of these beings and she is but one. Marais is handsome and unpredictable in some ways, but not very likable at all; he is user. The kids from the restaurant are interesting. It's hard to imagine so much blood lust. They feel he is responsible for the death of their friend and has become a sellout to his constituents. There are some loose ends as well, but, overall, it's a striking piece of film-making.

Cosmoeticadotcom The second film in the so-called Orphic Trilogy of Jean Cocteau, Orpheus, actually deals with the classic Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and is a better film than the predecessor film, The Blood Of A Poet, in the three film The Criterion Collection release, but it's by no means even close to a good film, much less a great one. Its special effects were long outdated when they were first tried in The Blood Of A Poet in 1930, for silent film masters like Buster Keaton did much more convincing work a decade earlier, while by the 1949 release of this film such 'special effects' were a joke- such as rubber gloves that quickly go onto Orpheus' hands in manifest reverse photography, or his tired trick of having a pool of water substitute for a mirror. On top of that, Cocteau's writing and narration of the film is downright laughable- almost an unwitting parody of the way poets act, the 'sets' are really cheesy and fifth rate, while the acting is so melodramatic one would think the actors were in a silent film that simply forgot to tell them it had sound now. Yes, it's that bad a bad film, although an improvement over the wretched The Blood Of A Poet. And as a poet who's actually written great poetry, believe me when I say skip this film, and avoid the poetasters and apologists who will declaim this film's supposed 'brilliance' or relevance to the creative impulse. It has none, unless one wants to believe that all great artists merely pose and do nothing at all in their supposed art form…. Jean Cocteau was a bad poet, and poseur of the worst sort, and this is the second bad film of his I've seen. I've seen only two so far. He mines every cliché on poetry and art imaginable, not to mention tossing off such execrable lines as, ''You'll live to regret those words,' 'You burn like ice,' 'A poet is a writer who writes but isn't a writer,'and 'Who can say what's poetry or not?' as if they were profound or somehow moving. Again, with just a little humor this film may have been a great parody, but the only funny moment in the whole film comes after the judges have sent Orpheus, Eurydice, and Heurtebise back to life and Death says 'If this were our former world, I'd say, 'Let's have a drink.' It's so ridiculous, inappropriate, and so meant to be 'deep' that it's absolutely hysterical, but in that Plan 9 From Outer Space sort of way. Yet, that is where some comic success could have been mined, but the actors are always so serious and melodramatic, rather than playing it as a spoof. The rest of the non-Underworld characters, however, seem like somnambulists. And yes, there's no mystery in the fact that the Underworld is a stand-in for the unconscious, which is how Death communicates to the interested Orpheus most effectively, and the whole not looking at Eurydice represents the desire for artists to always forge ahead, but, so what? Nothing of any depth is done with it.Is there anything that Cocteau innovates in this film? Does he even try to entertain? No, because the film is so self-indulgent and has such a precious sheen of artifice to it that one feels like one is watching Cocteau simply masturbate on screen- and that has nothing to do with the rumors that he and Marais, who would later star in Luchino Visconti's Le Notti Bianche (White Nights) were lovers. This film is sort of a look at what someone like Carl Theodor Dreyer may have done had he been less religiously oriented, and more centered on the clichés of art. In short, the worst of both worlds, to beg a clichés. Oh, how Cocteauvian of me!