This film was released 19th October 2018, and is no longer screening.

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The second part of poet, playwright, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy (the others being 1930’s The Blood of a Poet and 1960’s Testament of Orpheus) transposes the Greek myth of Orpheus to 1950s Paris.

Orphée (Jean Marais), a celebrated poet, is transported by a mysterious Princess (María Casares) to the Underworld. Chauffeured back to the realm of the living, he becomes obsessed with the cryptic messages that play on the Princess’s car radio, ignoring his wife Eurydice (Marie Déa), and failing to notice that his otherworldly driver has fallen in love with her, even as he himself has fallen in love with the Princess, an avatar of Death.

Thematically complex and visually inventive, Orphée saw Cocteau at the height of his powers as a filmmaker, and it remains a beautiful, touching, and often surreal fable.

(Notes by Kevin Coyne.)

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