095 - Orpheus, 1950, France. Dir. Jean Cocteau.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

095 - Orpheus, 1950, France. Dir. Jean Cocteau.

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is a story from Greek mythology.

I learned it in the third grade.

In public school.

In a school now called a failing school.

My school was not failing.

The teachers taught us.

We learned.

The third grade is a perfect time to learn the stories of Greek mythology.

They are great stories, and children can understand them.

The secret is to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Orpheus and Eurydice love each other.

Eurydice dies and goes to the Underworld.

Orpheus goes to the Underworld and appeals to get her back.

He is granted a test and may have her back.

If he will not turn around and look at her as they return.

They begin their return.

Her footsteps grow steadily more quiet.

It grows harder for him to tell if she is still walking behind him.

Finally, he cannot hear her at all.

He believes she is no longer behind him.

He turns and looks.

She is behind him.

He sees her.

He loses her.

Just moments before crossing the line into the world of the living.

Where they could have lived happily ever after.

If only he had taken a few more steps.

The story is riveting.

We were on the edge of our seats.

Now Jean Cocteau is telling the story.

It is updated.

Contemporary.

Orpheus is a poet.  A famous poet.  A great poet.

He hangs out with the kids at the Café of Poets.

They play music.

They drink coffee.

They write.

Or they come to be seen.

One day Cegeste, another poet, arrives with a woman.  He starts a fight.

The police arrive.  In a police car.  Two more arrive.  On motorcycles.  They knock him down.

He is in distress.  He may be dying.

The woman orders the police to put Cegeste in the car.  She orders Orpheus to get in the car.

Who is she to give orders?

Orpheus gets in.

As they drive strange things begin to happen.

Orpheus cannot figure out what is going on.

Cegeste is dead.

They are driving to a mysterious location.

They arrive at a great house.

The woman is a Princess.  The Princess makes Cegeste come back again.  But not fully alive.

The motorcyclists arrive.  They and Cegeste walk into a mirror.

How did they walk through the mirror?  Why are they going together?

Orpheus is left with the driver.  Heurtebise.

Say that name ten times fast.

Heurtebise takes Orpheus home.

At home, his wife Eurydice has been waiting for him.  Waiting with her girlfriends.  Worried about him.  Worried about Cegeste.

He refuses to tell them what has happened.

She tells him she is pregnant.

Heurtebise falls in love with Eurydice.

Orpheus sits in the car and listens to strange poetry coming over the radio.

Something has come over him.

Eurydice dies.

Heurtebise gives Orpheus special gloves and takes Orpheus through the mirror into the Underworld.

While there he discovers that the Princess is his personal Death and that she is fallen in love with him.

She seems to have made him fall in love with her.  She has cast some kind of a spell on him.

But she is in trouble for it.

The judges declare that Eurydice was not properly brought here, and that she must return.

But Orpheus is not allowed to look at her.

Ever.

Now there is a twist.  In the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus is not allowed to look at Eurydice until they arrive back to the world of the living.

In this telling of Orpheus, he is not allowed to look at her for the rest of their lives.

We might call that a difficult assignment.

Orpheus sits in the car listening to the strange poetry read over the radio.

Eurydice sits in the seat behind him so that he will not see her.

He sees her in the rearview mirror.

Uh-oh.

She disappears.

The people at the Café of Poets think Orpheus is responsible for the death of Cegeste.

They come and kill him.

He returns to the Underworld and tells the Princess, his Death, that he loves her.

But the judges send Orpheus and Eurydice back to life with no memory of anything that has happened.

They are happy and pregnant.

The Princess and her driver are punished.

And they all--not counting the Princess and her driver--live happily ever after.


On January 3 we watched the great classic La Belle et la Bete (Beauty and the Beast) (1946).

During that film we discovered that Jean Marais, the actor who played Belle's suitor Avenant, also played The Prince and also played The Beast!

Marais was a dashingly handsome man, and he captured the screen when he performed.

He performed in Elena and Her Men (1956), that wonderful Jean Renoir film we saw recently.

He did not perform in Cocteau's early film The Blood of a Poet (1932), which would come to form the first of a trilogy with our film Orpheus in the middle.

He did appear in the final film of the trilogy, Testament of Orpheus (1960), but not as Orpheus.  That film would star Jean Cocteau himself as Orpheus, the Poet, looking back over his own life and career, and bringing back many of his friends and colleagues.

He appears here as Orpheus.