Le Testament d'Orphée (1960)
Directed by Jean Cocteau

Film Review

In his final film, Jean Cocteau, France's greatest living poet, provides a fitting conclusion to a remarkable artistic career that spanned over fifty years and encompassed not only the cinema but also painting, novels, stage plays, music and poems.  As the title suggests, Le Testament d'Orphée revisits Cocteau's previous (and arguably most inspired) film, Orphée, based on the Orpheus legend of Greek antiquity.  Now it is Cocteau himself, near to death, who must venture into the Underworld (represented here as a bare studio set) to face a celestial court, embodied by two of his own creations, superbly portrayed by María Casares and François Périer (recreating their memorable roles from Orphée).  What is Cocteau's crime?  To be a poet, to dare to allow his mind to stray into places no mortal must visit, in an attempt to extract meaning from the barren confusion of existence.

The film completes the so-called Orphic trilogy which began with Cocteau's first cinematic offering, Le Sang d'un poète (1930).  That film,  a surreal oddity which never fails to impress with its visual inventiveness, was an attempt to convey the spiritual torment of an artist who is torn between his creative impulses, which forever seek to steal shards of light from the Divine and refashion these in ways that are accessible to the human heart, and the limits of his powers of expression. This theme is further developed in Cocteau's subsequent Orphée (1949), in which a poet (played by the director's lover at the time, Jean Marais) becomes fascinated by death and undertakes a bizarre pilgrimage to the Underworld, a scenario that Cocteau replays in his final film, accompanied by his adopted son and youthful companion, Edouard Dermithe.

Le Testament d'Orphée is the least regarded and least understood of Cocteau's films but it is the one that perhaps reveals most about Jean Cocteau, not just his passion for art in all its various manifestations and his life-long affinity for ancient Greek culture but also his colourful personality.  It is a film that brims with self-mocking humour and Cocteau allows himself the indulgence of including many of his friends in it.  Yul Brynner, a close friend of Cocteau who helped to finance the film, is well-chosen to play the imposing lackey who guides the poet to his final resting place.  The artist Pablo Picasso and famous matador Luis Dominguin both crop up, along with Charles Aznavour and Nicole Courcel.   15-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud, French cinema's latest star, also puts in an appearance, thanks to his mentor François Truffaut, a great admirer of Cocteau.   It was Truffaut who encouraged Cocteau to make the film, putting up some of the funds with the prize money he won at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959 for his debut film Les Quatre cents coups.

Whilst it was strongly defended in some quarters (notably by Truffaut, who adored it), Le Testament d'Orphée was generally ill-received when it was first released in 1960.  As he became increasingly eccentric in his declining years the intelligentsia no longer took Cocteau seriously, and his final film was dismissed by many as a self-indulgent vanity project.  Today, fifty years on from Cocteau's death, the film is held in somewhat higher esteem, perhaps not as great as his previous cinematic triumphs, but a satisfying and humorous coda to his immense artistic career.  Through some imaginative cinematic trickery Cocteau indulges in plenty of metaphysical mischief in his quest to unpick the mysteries of existence, leaving us in awe not only of his creative genius but also his unerring ability to take us outside ourselves and connect us with the Divine, by shedding that which was most precious to him, the blood of the poet.

Film Synopsis

A poet from the 18th century somehow manages to lose himself in time and ends up two hundred years in the future.  Here he searches for a professor who alone can end his torment, piercing him with a special temporal bullet that allows him to reborn in the world.  The poet follows a man dressed as a black horse to a gypsy camp where he comes across a burning photograph of Cégeste, one of the characters in his film Orphée.  Having torn the photograph to pieces, the poet throws them into the sea, from which Cégeste suddenly springs.  Cégeste guides the poet on his final journey, taking him to a court where he is interrogated by another two of his creations, the Death Princess and Heurtebise.  Having been found guilty of innocence and condemned to life, the poet is taken to the gates of eternity, where he must await his judgement...