A masterpiece of magical filmmaking. Though it is a narrative treatment of the legend of Orpheus in a modern Parisian setting, this film, written and directed by Jean Cocteau, is as inventive and as enigmatic as a dream. Orpheus (Jean Marais), the successful poet who is envied and despised by younger poets, needs to renew himself. He tries to push beyond the limits of human experience, to reach the unknowable – the mystery beyond mortality. When Alain Resnais in Japan couldn’t get his Hiroshima Mon Amour crew to understand, he’d refer to Orphee, whose weird myth fascinated them all.