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Home , Argiope (mythology), Brimo, Georges Auric, Judge Smith, Les Enfants terribles, Les Parents terribles

February 4, 2014 (Series 28: 2) , ORPHÉE/ (1950, 95 minutes)

Directed by Jean Cocteau Music by (composer) Cinematography by Nicolas Hayer Film Editing by Jacqueline Sadoul Costume Design by Marcel Escoffier Music Department Jacques Métehen (conductor) A Film Dedicated To Christian Bérard

Jean Marais ... Orphée François Périer ... Heurtebise María Casares ... The Princess - Death Marie Déa ... Juliette Gréco ... Aglaonice même, 1950 Coriolan, 1950 as Narrator, Jean-Pierre Melville ... Le directeur de l'hôtel (uncredited) 1950 Orpheus as Narrator, 1949 Daughter of the Sands as Narrator, 1948 as Narrator, 1946 Beauty JEAN COCTEAU (director) (b. Jean Maurice Eugène Cocteau, and the Beast as Voice of Magic, 1944 La Malibran as Alfred de July 5, 1889 in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, —d. October Musset, 1943 The Phantom Baron as Le baron Julius Carol, and 11, 1963 (age 74) in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France) wrote 74 1932 as Bit Part. He directed 11 films— films and TV shows, including 2012 Blues, 2010 Ea3, 2001 1962 Jean Cocteau s'adresse... à l'an 2000 (Short), 1960 Kerstmatinee 2001 (TV Movie), 1999 The Walled Garden , 1957 8 X 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 (Short), 1993 Le bel indifférent (Short), 1991 Merlín, 1990 Movements, 1952 La villa Santo Sospir (Short), 1950 Coriolan, “Carole Farley in 'The Telephone' and ''” (TV 1950 Orpheus, 1948 Les parents terribles, 1948 L'aigle à deux Movie), 1990 La voix humaine, 1986 “La voz humana” (TV têtes, 1946 Beauty and the Beast, 1932 The Blood of a Poet, and Series), 1984 “” (TV Movie), 1983 “Orpheus” (TV 1925 Jean Cocteau fait du cinema—and edited 1:1932 The Blood Movie), 1982 “Cher menteur” (TV Movie), 1980 “Les parents of a Poet. terribles” (TV Movie), 1969 “Estudio 1” (TV Series), 1978 “La voce umana” (TV Movie), 1978 “Le bel indifferent” (TV GEORGES AURIC (music—composer) (b. Georges Abel Louis Movie), 1975 “L'aigle à deux têtes” (TV Movie), 1972 “Oedipus Auric, February 15, 1899 in Lodève, Hérault, France—d. July Rex” (TV Special), 1966 “” (TV Movie), 1966 23, 1983 (age 84) in , France) composed music for 125 “La machine à écrire” (TV Movie), 1965 “A Voz Humana” (TV films and TV shows, among them 1978 “Au théâtre ce soir” (TV Movie), 1963 “La machine infernale” (TV Movie), 1962 The Series), 1969 The Christmas Tree, 1968 Therese and Isabelle, Typewriter, 1962 Jean Cocteau s'adresse... à l'an 2000 (Short), 1966 Danger Grows Wild, 1966 The Sleeping Sentinel, 1965 La 1961 Princess of Cleves, 1960 Testament of Orpheus, 1957 communale, 1965 “Marc et Sylvie” (TV Series), 1965 Thomas Django Reinhardt (Short), 1951 Black Crown, 1950 Les Enfants the Impostor, 1961 Le rendez-vous de minuit, 1961 The Terribles, 1948 Romantici a Venezia (Documentary short), 1948 Innocents, 1961 Princess of Cleves, 1959 SOS Pacific, 1958 Les parents terribles, 1948 L'aigle à deux têtes, 1948 L'amore, Christine, 1958 Next to No Time, 1958 Bonjour Tristesse, 1957 1948 Ruy Blas, 1946 Beauty and the Beast, 1943 Love Eternal, The Story of Esther Costello, 1957 He Who Must Die, 1957 The 1940 Comedy of Happiness, and 1932 The Blood of a Poet. He Crucible, 1957 Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, 1956 The has appeared in 13 films—1957 It Happened on the 36 Candles Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1956 Bold Adventure, 1956 Walk as Jean Cocteau, 1957 8 X 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements, Into Hell, 1956 Le mystère Picasso, 1955 Lola Montès, 1955 1954 Pantomimes (Short), 1951 Venom and Eternity as Lui- Rififi, 1954 Flesh and Desire, 1954 The Detective, 1954 The

Cocteau—ORPHÉE/ORPHEUS—2

Good Die Young, 1953 Roman Holiday, 1953 The Wages of Fear, 1952 Moulin Rouge, 1951 , 1950 Orpheus, 1949 The Spider and the Fly, 1949 The Queen of Spades, 1948 Les parents terribles, 1948 Aux yeux du souvenir, 1948 L'aigle à deux têtes, 1948 Ruy Blas, 1947 Les jeux sont faits, 1947 Hue and Cry, 1946 Beauty and the Beast, 1945 Caesar and Cleopatra, 1942 Midnight in Paris, 1939 Le corsaire, 1938 Trois minutes - les saisons, 1938 Street Without Joy, 1937 A Picnic on the Grass, 1936 Under Western Eyes, 1935 Mysteries of Paris, 1932 The Blood of a Poet, and 1931 À Nous la Liberté.

NICOLAS HAYER (cinematographer) (Lucien-Nicolas Hayer, May 1, 1898 in Paris, France—d. October 29, 1978 (age 80) in Saint-Laurent-du-Var, Alpes-Maritimes, France) was the cinematographer for 92 films and TV shows, including 1964- 1968 “Les cinq dernières minutes” (TV Series), 1966 “Anatole” (TV Movie), 1962 Le Doulos, 1962 Dark Journey, 1959 The ... Orphée (b. Jean-Alfred Villain-Marais, Sign of Leo, 1959 Two Men in Manhattan, 1959 The Little December 11, 1913 in Cherbourg, Manche, France—d. Professor, 1957 This Pretty World, 1956 Man and Child, 1956 November 8, 1998 (age 84) in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, France) Fidelio, 1956 Don Juan, 1955 Bel Ami, 1954 Hungarian appeared in 87 films and television shows, some of which are Rhapsody, 1953 The Night Is Ours, 1952 The Little World of Don 1996 Stealing Beauty, 1995 Les Misérables, 1985 Parking, 1973 Camillo, 1951 Under the Paris Sky, 1950 A Man Walks in the “Karatekas and co” (TV Mini-Series), 1969 Diamond Rush, 1967 City, 1950 Orpheus, 1949 Au grand balcon, 1949 Between Seven Guys and a Gal, 1966 The Saint Lies in Wait, 1965 Train Eleven and Midnight, 1948 La Chartreuse de Parme, 1947 d'enfer, 1965 Killer Spy, 1964 Fantômas, 1963 The Reluctant Bethsabée, 1946 , 1945 Girl with Grey Eyes, 1943 Le Spy, 1962 The Iron Mask, 1962 Pontius Pilate, 1961 Romulus Corbeau: The Raven, 1942 L'âge d'or, 1939 Satan's Paradise, and the Sabines, 1961 Princess of Cleves, 1960 Captain Blood, 1939 Sacred Woods, 1939 L'étrange nuit de Noël, 1939 1960 Testament of Orpheus, 1958 Every Day Has Its Secret, Métropolitain, 1938 Golden Venus, 1937 Ma petite marquise, 1957 Girl in His Pocket, 1957 Le Notti Bianche, 1956 The Whole 1937 Double Crime in the Maginot Line, 1936 Heritage, 1934 Town Accuses, 1956 Kiss of Fire, 1955 Napoléon, 1954 The Cartouche, 1932 Chair ardente, 1932 Riri et Nono chez les pur Count of Monte Cristo, 1953 Voice of Silence, 1952 Leathernose, sang (Short). 1950 Orpheus, 1949 The Secret of Mayerling, 1948 Les parents terribles, 1948 Aux yeux du souvenir, 1948 L'aigle à deux têtes. JACQUELINE SADOUL (editor) edited 19 films: 1968 The Man in 1948 Ruy Blas, 1946 Beauty and the Beast, 1944 Carmen, 1943 the Buick, 1964 That Tender Age, 1959 125 rue Montmartre, Love Eternal, 1941 Le pavillon brûle, 1937 Nights of Fire, 1936 1959 Oh! Qué mambo, 1959 The Female, 1958 The Night Affair, Les hommes nouveaux, 1934 L'aventurier, 1934 Le scandale, 1958 Not Delivered, 1957 Three Days to Live, 1957 Le rouge est 1933 L'épervier, mis, 1957 Reproduction interdite, 1955 Lola Montès, 1953 Les quatre mousquetaires (Short), 1953 Le témoin de minuit, 1951 FRANÇOIS PÉRIER ... Heurtebise (b. François Pillu, November The Cape of Hope, 1951 Le plus joli péché du monde, 1951 The 10, 1919 in Paris, France—d. June 29, 2002 (age 82) in Paris, Straw Lover, 1950 L'homme de joie, 1950 Orpheus, and 1948 France) has appeared in 119 films and television shows, Les parents terribles. including 1999 “La vita in briciole” (TV Movie), 1996 Mémoires d'un jeune con, 1990-1991 “Le gorille” (TV Series, 13 episodes), MARCEL ESCOFFIER (costume design) (b. November 29, 1910 1987 “La piovra 3” (TV Mini-Series, 6 episodes, 6 episodes), in Monte Carlo, Monaco—d. January 9, 2001 (age 90) in Ariccia, 1986 “La piovra 2” (TV Mini-Series), 1985 “Enquête sur une Lazio, Italy) designed costumes for 50 films and TV shows, parole donnée: La lettre perdue” (TV Movie), 1984 “Jacques le including 1979 “La bohème” (TV Movie), 1974 The Voyage, fataliste et son maître” (TV Movie), 1984 Le tartuffe, 1984 “The 1971 Swashbuckler, 1968 Mayerling, 1968 Phèdre, 1967 Woman Octopus” (TV Mini-Series), 1980 The Telephone Bar, 1979 The Times Seven, 1966 La mujer perdida, 1965 Lady L, 1965 La Police War, 1978 State Reasons, 1972 The Assassination, 1971 Bohème, 1961 Madame, 1961 Princess of Cleves, 1960 Blood Just Before Nightfall, 1970 Le Cercle Rouge, 1970 Give Her the and Roses, 1959 The Big Night, 1958 Les Misérables, 1957 Moon, 1970 Au champ de vapeur (Short), 1969 Les gauloises Lovers of Paris, 1955 Andrea Chenier, 1955 , 1954 bleues, 1969 Z, 1967 Le Samouraï, 1964 The Visit, 1963 The Madame du Barry, 1954 Livia, 1953 Lucrèce Borgia, 1952 Organizer, 1961 Five Day Lover, 1961 Les amours de Paris, Leathernose, 1950 Dream Ballerina, 1950 Dieu a besoin des 1960 Jack of Spades, 1960 Testament of Orpheus, 1958 The hommes, 1950 Orpheus, 1949 The Secret of Mayerling, 1948 Les Amorous Corporal, 1957 Nights of Cabiria, 1957 Que les parents terribles, 1948 L'aigle à deux têtes, 1948 Ruy Blas, 1946 hommes sont bêtes, 1956 Gervaise, 1956 The Man Who Never Beauty and the Beast, 1946 L'idiot, 1946 Land Without Stars, Was, 1954 The Bed, 1950 Les anciens de Saint-Loup, 1950 1944 Carmen, and 1939 Pasha's Wives. Orpheus, 1950 Sorceror, 1948 The Loves of Colette, 1946 Un revenant, 1946 The Temptation of Barbizon, 1943 La ferme aux

Cocteau—ORPHÉE/ORPHEUS—3 loups, 1941 Les jours heureux, 1941 Le duel, 1939 La fin du 2, 1973 (age 55) in Paris, France) wrote 14 films, including 1972 jour, 1938 Hôtel du Nord, and 1938 Mother Love. A Cop, 1970 Le Cercle Rouge, 1969 Army of Shadows (adaptation), 1967 Le Samouraï, 1966 Le Deuxieme Souffle MARÍA CASARES ... The Princess – Death (b. María Victoria (adaptation and dialogue), 1963 Magnet of Doom (dialogue and Casares Pérez, November 21, 1922 in A Coruña, Galicia, screenplay), 1962 Le Doulos (adaptation), 1961 Léon Morin, Spain—d. November 22, 1996 (age 74) in La Vergne, Charente- Priest (screenplay and dialogue), 1959 Two Men in Manhattan Maritime, France) appeared in 33 films and television shows, (scenario, adaptation and dialogue), 1956 Bob le Flambeur, 1950 among them 1995 Someone Else's America, 1990 Les chevaliers Les Enfants Terribles, 1949 Le Silence de la Mer (adaptation), de la table ronde, 1988 La lectrice, 1988 Sand and Blood, 1975 and 1946 Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d'un clown (Short). He “L'île des chèvres” (TV Movie), 1974 Flavia, 1960 Testament of also directed 14 films—1972 A Cop, 1970 Le Cercle Rouge, Orpheus, 1959 “Macbeth” (TV Movie), 1951 Shadow and Light, 1969 Army of Shadows, 1967 Le Samouraï, 1966 Le Deuxieme 1950 Orpheus, 1948 Wench, 1948 La Chartreuse de Parme, Souffle, 1963 Magnet of Doom, 1962 Le Doulos, 1961 Léon 1948 La septième porte, 1946 The Revenge of Roger, 1946 Roger Morin, Priest, 1959 Two Men in Manhattan, 1956 Bob le la Honte, 1945 Les dames du Bois de Boulogne, and 1945 Flambeur, 1953 When You Read This Letter, 1950 Les Enfants Children of Paradise. Terribles, 1949 Le Silence de la Mer, and 1946 Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d'un clown (Short). MARIE DÉA ... Eurydice (b. Odette Alice Marie Deupès, May 17, 1912 in JEAN COCTEAU, from World Film Directors, Nanterre, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], V. I. Ed. John Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson France—d. March 1, 1992 (age 79) in Company, NY 1987. Entry by Konstantin Paris, France) appeared in 51 films and Bazarov TV shows, including 1983 “Deux amies d'enfance” (TV Mini-Series), French director and scenarist, poet, novelist, 1983 “Julien Fontanes, magistrat” (TV dramatist and illustrator—one of the most Series), 1980 “Les chevaux du soleil” diversely talented creators of the twentieth (TV Series), 1980 “La vie des autres” century—was born into a rich middle-class (TV Series), 1979 Subversion, 1977 family in Maisons-Lafitte, near Paris. He was Armaguedon, 1977 “La famille Cigale” brought up in Paris, where his maternal (TV Mini-Series, 6 episodes), 1974 grandfather owned a house in the vicinity of Marriage, 1966 The Devil's Tricks, Pigalle, on the Rue de Bruyêre. He thus belonged 1962 Assassin in the Phonebook, 1957 to Montmartre, though to the bourgeois rather O.S.S. 117 n'est pas mort, 1951 Dear than to the artistic part of it. His father, Georges Caroline, 1950 Orpheus, 1949 56, rue Pigalle, 1946 Impasse, Cocteau, spent all his life working as a stockbroker, though his 1943 Finance noire, 1943 Secrets, 1942 Les Visiteurs du Soir, only real passion was painting. Cocteau’s mother. Eugènie was 1942 Le journal tombe à cinq heures, 1941 Foolish Husbands, the daughter of Eugène Lecompte, who owned the brokerage 1941 First Ball, 1939 Personal Column, 1939 Nord-Atlantique. house where Georges worked, the family houses, and a rich collection of art objects, including several Stradivarius violins JULIETTE GRÉCO ... Aglaonice (b. February 7, 1927 in that were regularly used by visiting virtuosi at the Lecomptes’ Montpellier, Hérault, France) appeared in 29 films and TV weekly chamber music concerts. shows, including 2002 Jedermanns Fest, 1973 Far West, 1967 Jean Cocteau was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and The Night of the Generals, 1965 Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1964 Love later insisted (characteristically) that he was le cancre par at Sea, 1961 The Big Gamble, 1960 Crack in the Mirror, 1959 excellence there—the prize booby of his class. His school reports Whirlpool, 1958 The Roots of Heaven, 1958 The Naked Earth, contradict that. He was undeniably an enfant terrible (and was 1957 It Happened on the 36 Candles, 1957 The Sun Also Rises, expelled from the school in the spring of 1904), but one who 1956 The Lebanese Mission, 1953 When You Read This Letter, showed signs of a lively mind and a precocious talent for 1950 Orpheus, 1949 The Sinners, and 1948 Aller et retour sketching and versifying. It was at Condorcet that Cocteau had (Short). his first homosexual infatuation, with a boy called Pierre Dargelos whose haunting reincarnations appear throughout JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE ... Le directeur de l'hôtel (b. Jean- Cocteau’s work—the shameless untutored faun whose mouth and Pierre Grumbach, October 20, 1917 in Paris, France—d. August eyes can kill. Cocteau—ORPHÉE/ORPHEUS—4

Frederick Brown argues from this “that Cocteau was self-portraits that speak, are framed by a shot of a collapsing already at odds with the ideal double that he would spend his life building to show that they take place in only a moment of “real” pursuing. Dargelos is a real name—it may be found on yellowing time. rosters—but its is equally Cocteau’s pseudonym for his primal With its dreamlike atmosphere and mysterious imagery, malediction, for the angelic offspring of his catastrophe. A this autobiographical film-poem resembles such surrealist decade after leaving Condorcet he wrote: ‘At an age when gender pictures as Buñuel’s L’Age d’or, made at the same time and for does not yet influence decisions of the flesh, my desire was not the same patron, the Vicomte de Noailles. (Cocteau, who to reach, not to touch, nor to embrace the elected person, but to regarded the surrealists as rivals, denied the resemblance.)... be him....What loneliness!’ This original Cocteau’s second film as director forfeiture, placing the locus of Being was La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the outside himself, would make solitude Beast, 1946). To save her father from the intolerable and anonymity a form of death. Beast’s wrath, Beauty (Josette Day) He was fated to crave love in order to be.” allows herself to be incarcerated in the This hunger for love and recognition monster’s magic castle, which is lit by accounts well enough for Cocteau’s candelabra held by disembodied arms and constant striving to be in the forefront of the decorated with living statues. Gradually social, artistic, and literary avant-garde, and she comes to recognize the Beast’s his ardent pursuit of friendship with all the essential gentleness and melancholy, and other leaders of artistic Paris. warms to him when he allows her to visit ...By the middle of World War I, her sick father. But she stays too long, and Cocteau was writing for the , when she returns the heartbroken Beast is obeying Diaghilev’s famous injunction dying. Her dissolute admirer Avenant “Astonish me” with the ballet arrives to rescue her and to steal the (decor by Picasso, music by Eric Satie), the Beast’s treasure. He fails, and dies at the great succès de scandale of 1917. Cocteau same moment as the Beast. Avenant was exempted by ill health from military becomes the dead monster and the Beast, service but made his way to the battlefront transfigured by Beauty’s look of love, is with an ambulance unit, met and flew with reborn as a more princely Avenant. the aviator Roland Garros, and encountered the problems and In Cocteau’s hands the story becomes an illustration of adventures imaginatively recalled in his novel Thomas his central theme: “To live you must die.” To this paradox he l’imposteur (1923). adds thought-provoking ambiguity by casting Jean Marais as Cocteau’s star rose rapidly after the war....There were both Avenant and the Beast. There was great praise for Cocteau’s modernistic adaptations of Sophocles’ (1922, with handling of tone and pace in the film, from the broad humor of scenery by Picasso) and of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Beauty’s rustic homelife to the dreamlike slow motion of her (1924), and an original one-act play, Orphée (1926). Not content entry into the castle. He and his designer Christian Bérard to seem merely a universal man of letters, Cocteau painted and rigorously eschewed the kind of misty effects usually employed drew, designed tapestries, tinkered with typography, wrote to suggest magic and the supernatural—Cocteau said of Bérard program notes for avant-garde composers, and championed that “he was the only one to understand that vagueness is American jazz and Charlie Chaplin....He knew everyone of unsuitable to the world of the fairy tale and that mystery exists interest or social importance, from Picasso to the Prince of only in precise things.” Bérard’s gorgeous costumes and Henri Wales. He also formed a close emotional and creative liaison Alekan’s camera style are both said to have been inspired by with the younger writer Raymond Radiguet, whose death at the Dutch paintings, especially the works of Vermeer. The score was age of twenty-three temporarily shattered Cocteau. He sought by George Auric, who provided the music for all of Cocteau’s solace in opium, then in religion, but before long thumbed his films except the last. La Belle et la Bête, “one of the great works nose at Jacques Maritain, his spiritual counselor, and resumed his of poetic cinema,” was made in the face of a daunting succession old life. of difficulties and afflictions, described in Cocteau’s Diary of a ...For Cocteau, poetry was the supreme art and the poet Film. the supreme being, uniquely in touch with ultimate realities, There followed two pictures which Cocteau adapted especially death, which in his works is not the end but a gateway from his own plays. L’Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two to self-realization. This is the theme of virtually all of his films, Heads, 1947)... and Les Parents terribles (1948).... The picture including the first, Le Sang d’un poète (The Blood of a Poet, was directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, reportedly in close 1930-1932). In this silent allegory the poet recognizes and tries collaboration with Cocteau, who is credited only as a scenarist to escape his muse, wrestles with his past, dies and is resurrected. and adapter (of his own novel). These incidents, recounted in narcissistic images of mirrors and Cocteau—ORPHÉE/ORPHEUS—5

Central to Cocteau’s work in the cinema are three traveler. He enters our world and is led by a centaur to a cave. intensely personal films in which he explores through the figure There he finds Cégeste (played as in Orphée by Cocteau’s of Orpheus his obsession with the role of the poet, torn between adopted son Edouard Dermit), who gives him a flower. Cocteau the familiar and the unknown. This trilogy, which began with Le tries to draw the flower but succeeds only in producing his own Sang d’un poète, continued with Orphée (Orpheus, 1950), likeness. He is ordered to take the flower to the goddess Minerva developed from his 1925 play, and and, after various ordeals and encounters, he universally recognized to be his finds her. She scorns his gift and strikes him masterpiece. Orpheus (Jean Marais) is a dead. Resurrected, the poet continues his celebrated poet living in Paris, where one wanderings, finally vanishing together with day he sees a younger poet, Cégeste, run Cégeste. The film is in effect and account of down and killed by two motorcyclists. They Cocteau;s life as an artist and a manifesto of his are the emissaries of a beautiful Princess theories and beliefs, crowded with his lovers (Maria Casarès), who is Death. The Princess and friends, including Marais, Dermit, Picasso, drives with Orpheus out of the city into an Yul Brynner, the bullfighter Dominguin, and unfamiliar countryside, where her radio Brigitte Bardot. Serene and often witty, it has announces a strange poetry that Orpheus been dismissed by some critics as a facetious finds obsessively fascinating: “L’oiseau coda to his work and hailed by others as one of chante avec ses doigts. Je repéte. Deux fois. the ciema’s greatest confessional documents. L’oiseau chante avec ses doigts.” [The bird In 1955 the enfant terrible Cocteau sings with his fingers. I repeat. Twice. The became one of the “Immortals” of the Académie bird sings with his fingers.”] It is the dead Française. “It is not up to us to obey the public, Cégeste, we learn later who is broadcasting which does not know what it wants,” he said this surreal litany. once, “but to compel the public to follow us. If Eurydice, Orpheus’s wife, is the next to die. Orpheus it refuses we must use tricks: images, stars, decors, and other follows her into the , partly in an attempt to save her, magic lanterns, suitable to intrigue children and make them partly because he is fascinated by the Princess—by death itself. swallow the spectacle.” He saves Euridyce, who journeys back to daylight in an oddly farcical scene but then voluntarily returns to the Underworld, Jean Cocteau. Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film. Dover, believing that her husband no longer loves her. Orpheus is NY, 1972 attacked by the Bacchantes—militant feminist poets who believe The postulate of the story requires faith, the faith of childhood. I him responsible for Cégeste’s death. He is killed, but the mean that one must believe implicitly at the very beginning and Princess, who loves him, returns him to life and reunited him not question the possibility that the mere picking of a rose might with Euridyce before going off to face some unthinkable lead a family into adventure, or that a man can be changed into a punishment. Through death the poet is reborn, renouncing the beast, and vice versa. Such enigmas offend grown-ups who are influence of Cégeste’s poetry (which is the poetry of death) and really prejudiced, proud of their doubt, armed with derision. But recovering his own vision. I have the impudence to believe that the cinema which depicts Gavin Lambert wrote that Orphée is first of all “an the impossible is apt to carry conviction, in a way, and may be unmatched achievement in the telling of a magical adventure. able to put a “singular” occurrence into the plural. The balance of the real and the magical is marvelously It is up to us (that is, to me and my unit–in fact, one sustained…[and] the narrative is so full of invention that it never entity) to avoid those impossibilities which are even more of a ceases to be dramatic.” The film “reasserts wonder, ritual, the jolt in the midst of the improbable than in the midst of reality. power of illusion and magic, reinterpreting them in a For fantasy has its own laws which are like those of perspective. contemporary setting which brings the myth closer, gives it a You may not bring what is distant into the foreground, or render disturbing edge of reality.” Many of the images and devices fuzzily what is near. The vanishing lines are impeccable and the introduced in Le Sang d’un po`ete are used here with a new orchestration so delicate that the slightest false note jars. I am not delight in the cinema’s capacity for illusion. The way into the speaking of what I have achieved, but of what I shall attempt Zone—the limbo between this world and the next, filmed in the within the means at my disposal. bombed-out ruins of the Saint-Cyr military academy—is through My method is simple: not to aim at poetry. That must a mirror; a vat of mercury was used to make it appear that come of its own accord. The mere whispered mention of its name Orpheus’s hands are passing through glass. Other astonishing frightens it away. I shall try to build a table. It will be up to you effects were obtained by substituting plain glass for mirrors, and then to eat at it, to examine it or to chop it up for firewood. by the use of duplicate rooms, doubles, reverse projection, and false perspective. The theme is the autobiographical one of Le Sunday, August 26, 1945 Sang d’un poète but, Cocteau said, “then I strummed it with one After a year of every sort of preparation and difficulty, I finger, now I orchestrate it.” Orphée won the Grand Prix at the am going to start shooting tomorrow. It would be stupid to Venice Film Festival. complain of the type of difficulties inherent in such a task, for I It was nine years before Cocteau completed his Orphic think that our work compels us to indulge in daydreams, to trilogy with his Le Testament d’Orphée, which he clearly dream the most beautiful dreams. And what’s more, it will give intended as his own testament as well as Orpheus’. It is a fable in us the opportunity to do what we like with human time, which is which the director himself (then seventy) appears as a time- normally so painful to live through minute by minute, in order. Cocteau—ORPHÉE/ORPHEUS—6

To break time up, turn it inside out and upside down, is a real according to who tells the story. Racine and Moliére did better. triumph over the inevitable. They copied antiquity. I always advise people to copy a model. It is by the impossibility of doing the same thing twice and by the I’m finding it very difficult to make the artists new blood that is infused into the old frame that the poet is understand that the style of the film needs a luster and a lack of judged. naturalness that are supernatural. There is not much dialogue. Orphée’s Death and Heurtebise reproach Orphée for They cannot permit the least fuzziness. . . . asking questions. Wanting to understand is a peculiar obsession I am not a real director and probably never shall be. I of mankind.There is nothing more vulgar than works that set out get too interested in what is happening. to prove something. Orphée, naturally, avoids even the appearance of trying to prove anything.“What were you trying to A film is a monument, but built neither in the present, say?” This is a fashionable question. I was trying to say what I last.” An amazing statement, As if anything at all was lasting, said. beginning with the world! All arts can and must wait. They may even wait to live until after the artist is dead. Only the ridiculous costs of cinematography force it to instant success, so it is satisfied with being mere entertainment.With Orphée, I decided to take the risk of making a film as if cinematography could permit itself the luxury of waiting—as if it was the art which it ought to be. Beauty hates ideas. It is sufficient to itself. Our age is becoming dried out with ideas. It is the child of the Encyclopaedists. But having an idea is not enough: the idea must have us, haunt us, obsess us, become unbearable to us. Le Sang d’un poète was based on the poet’s need to go through a series of deaths and to be reborn in a shape closer to his real being. There, the theme was played with one finger, and inevitably so, because I had to invent a craft that I did not know. Jean Cocteau: Orpheus In Orphée, I have orchestrated the theme, and this is why the two When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming. Only films are related, twenty years apart. the people and places of the dream matter. I have difficulty I have often been asked about the figure of the glass- making contact with others, as one does when half-asleep. If a vendor: he was the only one able to illustrate the saying that there person is asleep and someone else comes into the sleeper’s room, is nothing so hard to break as the habit of one’s job; since, this other person does not exist. He or she exists only if although he died very young, he still persists in crying his wares introduced into the events of the dream. Sunday is not a real day in a region where windowpanes are meaningless. of rest for me, I try to go back to sleep as quickly as possible. Once the machinery had been set in motion, everyone Realism in unreality is a constant pitfall. People can had to go with it, so that in the scene when he returns to the always tell me that this is possible, or that is impossible; but do house, Marais succeeded in being comical without going beyond we understand anything about the workings of fate? This is the the limits of taste and with no break between lyricism and mysterious mechanism that I have tried to make tangible. Why is operetta. Orphée’s Death dressed in this way, or that? Why does she travel The same is true of François Périer, whose mockery in a Rolls, and why does Heurtebise appear and disappear at will never becomes unkind or makes him seem to be taking advantage in some circumstances, but submit to human laws in others? This of his supernatural powers. Nothing was more demanding than is the eternal why that obsesses thinkers, from Pascal to the least the role of Orphée, grappling with the injustices of the youth of of poets. literature. He does not seem to me to have secrets which he I wanted to touch lightly on the most serious problems, divines and which deceive him. He proves his greatness only without idle theorizing. So the film is a thriller which draws on through that of the actor. Here again, Marais illuminates the film myth from one side and the supernatural from the other. for me with his soul. I have always liked the no man’s land of twilight where Among the misconceptions which have been written mysteries thrive. I have thought, too, that cinematography is about Orphée, I still see Heurtebise described as an angel and the superbly adapted to it, provided it takes the least possible Princess as Death. advantage of what people call the supernatural. The closer you In the film, there is no Death and no angel. There can be get to a mystery, the more important it is to be realistic. Radios in none. Heurtebise is a young Death serving in one of the cars, coded messages, shortwave signals and power cuts are all numerous sub-orders of Death, and the Princess is no more Death familiar to everybody and allow me to keep my feet on the than an air hostess is an angel. ground. I never touch on dogmas. The region that I depict is a Nobody can believe in a famous poet whose name has border on life, a no man’s land where one hovers between life been invented by a writer. I had to find a mythical bard, the bard and death. of bards, the Bard of Thrace. And his story is so enchanting that When Marais is praised for his acting in Orphée, he it would be crazy to look for another. It provides the background replies: “The film plays my parts for me.” on which I embroider. I do nothing more than to follow the The three basic themes of Orphée are: cadence of all fables which are modified in the long run 1. The successive deaths through which a poet must Cocteau—ORPHÉE/ORPHEUS—7 pass before he becomes, in that admirable line from Mallarmé, handful of Greek heroes to visit the Underworld and return; his tel qu’en lui-même enfin l’éternité le change—changed into music and song even had power over . himself at last by eternity. Some sources credit Orpheus with further gifts to 2. The theme of immortality: the person who represents mankind: medicine, which is more usually under the aegis of Orphée’s Death sacrifices herself and abolishes herself to make Aesculapius; writing, which is usually credited to ; and the poet immortal. agriculture, where Orpheus assumes the Eleusinian role of 3. Mirrors: we watch ourselves grow old in mirrors. Triptolemus as giver of 's knowledge to mankind. They bring us closer to death. Orpheus was an augur and seer; practiced magical arts and The other themes are a mixture of Orphic and modern astrology, founded cults to and and prescribed myth: for example, cars that talk (the radio receivers in cars). the mystery rites preserved in Orphic texts. In addition, Pindar Orphée is a realistic film; or, to be more precise, and Apollonius of Rhodes place Orpheus as the harpist and observing Goethe’s distinction between reality and truth, a film companion of and the Argonauts. Orpheus had a brother in which I express a truth peculiar to myself. If that truth is not named Linus who went to Thebes and became a Theban. He is the spectator’s, and if his personality conflicts with mine and claimed by Aristophanes and Horace to have taught cannibals to rejects it, he accuses me of lying. I am even astonished that so subsist on fruit; and to have made lions and tigers obedient to many people can still be penetrated by another’s ideas, in a him. Horace believed however, that Orpheus only introduced country noted for its individualism. order and civilization to savages. Strabo (64 BC – c. AD 24) While Orphée does encounter some lifeless audiences, it presents Orpheus as a mortal, who lived and died in a village also encounters others that are open to my dream and agree to be close to Olympus…. put to sleep and to dream it with me (accepting the logic by The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that which dreams operate, which is implacable, although it is not of his wife Eurydice (sometimes referred to as and also governed by our logic). known as Argiope). While walking among her people, the I am only talking about the mechanics, since Orphée is Cicones, in tall grass at her wedding, Eurydice was set upon by a not at all a dream in itself: through a wealth of detail similar to satyr. In her efforts to escape the satyr, Eurydice fell into a nest that which we find in dreams, it summarizes my way of living of vipers and suffered a fatal bite on her heel. Her body was and my conception of life. discovered by Orpheus who, overcome with grief, played such sad and mournful songs that all the and gods wept. On The Opheus myth (from Wikipedia) their advice, Orpheus travelled to the underworld and by his Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient music softened the hearts of Hades and (he was the Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are only person ever to do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front with his music, his attempt to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper the underworld, and his death at the hands of those who could world. He set off with Eurydice following, and, in his anxiety, as not hear his divine music. As an archetype of the inspired singer, soon as he reached the upper world, he turned to look at her, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of forgetting that both needed to be in the upper world, and she classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in vanished for the second time, but now forever. countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, The story in this form belongs to the time of Virgil, who , and painting. first introduces the name of (by the time of Virgil's For the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of Georgics, the myth has Aristaeus chasing Eurydice when she was the so-called "Orphic" mysteries. He was credited with the bitten by a serpent) and the tragic outcome. Other ancient writers, composition of the Orphic Hymns, a collection of which however, speak of Orpheus's visit to the underworld in a more survives. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were negative light; according to Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium, the regarded as oracles. Some sources note Orpheus' infernal gods only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. Thracian origins. Ovid says that Eurydice's death was not caused by fleeing from The earliest literary reference to Orpheus is a two-word Aristaeus but by dancing with on her wedding day. In fragment of the sixth-century BC lyric poet Ibycus: onomaklyton fact, Plato's representation of Orpheus is that of a coward, as Orphēn ("Orpheus famous-of-name"). He is not mentioned in instead of choosing to die in order to be with the one he loved, he Homer or Hesiod. Most ancient sources accept his historical instead mocked the gods by trying to go to Hades and get her existence; Aristotle is an exception. back alive. Since his love was not "true"—he did not want to die Pindar calls Orpheus "the father of songs" and identifies for love—he was actually punished by the gods, first by giving him as a son of the Thracian king Oeagrus and the Muse him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld, and Calliope: but as Karl Kerenyi observes, "in the popular mind he then by being killed by women…. was more closely linked to the community of his disciples and Orpheus's descent to the Underworld is paralleled in adherents than with any particular race or family". other versions of a worldwide theme: the Japanese myth of Greeks of the Classical age venerated Orpheus as the Izanagi and Izanami, the Akkadian/Sumerian myth of Inanna's greatest of all poets and musicians; it was said that while Descent to the Underworld, and Mayan myth of Ix Chel and had invented the lyre, Orpheus perfected it. Poets such as Itzamna. The Nez Perce tell a story about the trickster figure, Simonides of Ceos said that Orpheus's music and singing could Coyote, that shares many similarities with the story of Orpheus charm , fish and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks and Eurydice. This is but one theme present in a larger "North into dance, and divert the course of rivers. He was one of the American Orpheus Tradition" in American Indian oral tradition. Cocteau—ORPHÉE/ORPHEUS—8

The myth theme of not looking back, an essential precaution in Composer Judge Smith based his songstory Orfeas on Jason's raising of Brimo Hekate under 's the ancient myth of Orpheus. The 13th studio album of the guidance, is reflected in the Biblical story of Lot's wife when alternative rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is called escaping from Sodom. More directly, the story of Orpheus is Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, with the initial song of the similar to the ancient Greek tales of Persephone captured by latter album based around a satirical reworking of the legend, Hades and similar stories of Adonis captive in the underworld. viewed from a more modern male/female perspective. Peter However, the developed form of the Orpheus myth was entwined Blegvad and Andy Partridge created a music and spoken-word with the Orphic mystery cults and, later in Rome, with the recording, Orpheus the Lowdown. Folk artist Anaïs Mitchell's development of Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus…. fourth studio album is loosely based on the story of Feeling spurned by Orpheus for taking only male lovers, the set in modern times. Ciconian women, followers of Dionysus, first threw sticks and ' play da Conceição, later stones at him as he played, but his music was so beautiful even adapted by Marcel Camus in the 1959 film , tells the rocks and branches refused to hit him. Enraged, the women the story in the modern context of a favela in tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies. In during Carnaval. Jean Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy (The Blood of a Albrecht Dürer's drawing of Orpheus's death, based on an Poet, Orpheus and Testament of Orpheus) was filmed over thirty original, now lost, by Andrea Mantegna, a ribbon high in the tree years, and is also based on the story. above him is lettered Orfeus der erst puseran ("Orpheus, the first Baz Lurhmann, in DVD commentaries for his 2001 film pederast"). Moulin Rouge, characterizes the film as, in part, a tale of an His head and lyre, still singing mournful songs, floated Orphic hero (in this case a songwriter) who embarks upon a visit down the swift Hebrus to the Mediterranean shore. There, the to the underworld (in this case the demi-monde around Paris's winds and waves carried them on to the Lesbos shore, where the Montmartre) in search of his fortune and ultimately to attempt inhabitants buried his head and a shrine was built in his honour the rescue of his doomed love. The film adapts a widely known near Antissa; there his oracle prophesied, until it was silenced by piece from Jacques Offenbach's comedic operetta Orphée aux Apollo. In addition to the people of Lesbos, Greeks from Ionia Enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), identified with the once- and Aetolia consulted the oracle, and his reputation spread as far popular "can-can" music hall dance. Offenbach's operatic work as Babylon…. had itself parodied the classical tale of Orpheus' attempted rescue The Orpheus motif has permeated Western culture and of Eurydice from Pluto (Hades). has been used as a theme in all art forms. Examples include the adapted the Orpheus motif in his graphic Breton Lais Sir from the early 13th century or the musical novel . Neil Gaiman depicts his version of Orpheus in interpretations L'Orfeo (1607) by Claudio Monteverdi, Christoph The Sandman comics series. Gaiman's Orpheus is the son of Willibald Gluck´s opera (1762), Franz Liszt's Oneiros (the Dream Lord Morpheus) and the muse Calliope…. symphonic poem (1854), Stravinsky's ballet Orpheus (1948) and Poul Anderson's Hugo Award winning novelette Goat two by : (1973- Song, published in 1972, is a retelling of the story of Orpheus in 1984) and (2009). a science fiction setting…

The online PDF files of these handouts have color images COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2014 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS SERIES 28: February 11 Kenji Mizoguchi, The Life of Oharu, 1952, 136 min February 18 Satyajit Ray, Charulata/The Lonely Wife, 1964, 119 minutes February 25 Metin Erksan, Dry Summer, 1964, 90 min March 4 Monte Hellman, Two-Lane Blacktop, 1971, 103 min March 11 John Cassavetes, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976, 135 min Spring break March 17-22 March 25 Agnes Varda, Vagabond, 1985, 105 min April 1 Gabriell Axel, Babette’s Feast, 1987, 104min April 8 Louis Malle, Vanya on 42nd Street, 1994, 119 min April 15 Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, 110 min April 22 Tommy Lee Jones, The Three Burials of Melquaides Estrada, 2005, 120 min April 29 José Padilha, , 2007, 115 min May 6 John Huston, The Dead, 1987 83 min CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected] …email Bruce Jackson [email protected] ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News