For most of the modern era, artists have struggled to reverse the aging process on the major works of antiquity, and have experimented valiantly with different ways to make the entertainment of several hundred or even thousand years ago appear contemporary. For the most part, it is an uphill climb, as direct translations of works like Pyramus and Thisbe are more likely to come across as ancient soap operas, their melodrama draining them of potential vitality before even the first murder or love affair. Of these attempts, Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus must be one of the most successful, simply because it manages to translate the narrative beats to the modern day without making any attempt to translate its bizarre and obtuse logic. The heart of the Orpheus narrative and its tragedy have been preserved, but in placing its action in so dischordant a setting, it inverts the natural politics of adaptation, and reveals the physical details, rather than the story, to be illusory.
While the Orpheus of yore was a master of lyre, who played so beautifully that the trees themselves uprooted to be closer to his sounds, his counterpart (Jean Marais) in the Paris of the 20thCentury is a master of the written word. A useful skill in a world that all but trades in poetry, the radios broadcasting apparently unbroken free verse constantly. After a fight staged by the acolytes of the Princess of death (Maria Casares), Cegeste (Edouard Dermithe), a young rival of Orpheus is killed. They gather up his body, and take it to a chateau in the French countryside, where Orpheus becomes obsessed with the Princess. Unfortunately, Orpheus’s wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) is killed by the Princess’s henchmen, and she is cast down into the underworld. Orpheus follows her there, where he is sent before an inquest in order to get her back. He does, but he is unable to look at her again, lest she be sent back to the underworld to dwell forever.
If you’ve never seen the film and were unable to follow that, don’t worry: coherence isn’t why Orpheus is so frequently listed among the great accomplishments of French Cinema. The rules by which its France operates are unapproachable by any standard of consistency, but it provides an answer to a long unanswered question: how do you update a story that simply doesn’t make sense in a modern setting (as advanced as they were, one does well to remember that the ancient Greeks advanced a theology in which the father of the universe devoured all of his children)? Simple: by making a film that doesn’t make sense by the standards of any era. Orpheus takes a story set in a world governed by omnipotent forces and one-ups it by making its story governed by rules that wouldn’t make sense in any civilization, no matter its theology or its creative inclination. The governance that brings this vision of France together is entirely Cocteau’s.
Let it be said, though, that none of this would work were his artistry less sophisticated, or his imagining of the world less complete. Most famous of all the film’s inventions is its dark mirror underworld, which went on to influence the video for A-Ha’s “Take On Me”, among other things. The acting is certainly capable on all counts, but here, they are above all things physically beautiful (this may be one of the most aesthetically pleasing casts ever assembled) so as to better integrate them as components of a world already in motion. Beneath them, and beneath even the the story of Orpheus itself, is the human drive for self-perpetuating obsession, and the pursuit that will never be satisfied. Orpheus is clearly possessed of this, but in a larger sense, so is Cocteau, and his notions of the unattainable are realized with a clarity that has perhaps never been equaled in another film. The France of 1950 (with all of its lingering nightmares of the occupation) is the touching off point, but really, these are just superficial details in a landscape repurposed to suit Cocteau’s downward drive into the underworld. All of it, right down to the adapted details of the story itself, serve to produce a vision that matches Orpheus’s in both beauty and delusion. Even if the success of such results are subjective, it would be hard to argue with the dedication impressed through it.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Like with so many of their classic titles, Criterion has rolled out the red carpet for their release of Orpheus, restoring both the transfer and the soundtrack. Additionally, the disc contains Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown (1984), a feature-length documentary on the director, Jean Cocteau and his Tricks (2008), an interview with his assistant director Claude Pinoteau, 40 Minutes with Jean Cocteau (1957), an interview with the director, In Search of Jazz (1956), another interview regarding the use of jazz in the film, and La Villa Santo-Sospir (1951), a 16 mm short by Cocteau. There's also an audio commentary by James S. Williams, an image gallery by portrait photographer Roger Corbeau, newsreel footage of St. Cyr academy (a location in the film), and the theatrical trailer.
"Orpheus (The Criterion Collection)" is on sale August 30, 2011 and is not rated. Fantasy, Foreign. Written and directed by Jean Cocteau. Starring Jean Marais, Maria Casares, Marie Dea, Francois Perier, Edouard Dermithe.
