| Orpheus | 
 enlarge | Director: Jean Cocteau
Actors: Jean Cocteau, Jean Marais, Francois Perier, Maria Casares, Marie Dea
Studio: Morningstar Ent.
Category: Video
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1903
Format: Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Media: VHS Tape
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 630320208X
UPC: 037429074534
EAN: 9786303202082
ASIN: 630320208X
Theatrical Release Date: November 29, 1950
Release Date: January 18, 2000
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| Customer Reviews:
 Silence Flows Faster Backwards... August 19, 2002
Whether you think it is deep or merely whimsical, it is awfully difficult to dislike a film which starts with Death's chauffeur calling the cops because the poets are brawling at the local cafe. Jean Cocteau's Orphee (Orpheus) is possibly the most uncharacterizable film ever: neither high art nor low, and neither a recasting of the classical Orphic myth nor a refutation of the original. If anything, Orphee is in fact all of these things simultaneously, and therein lies its art.
In the original Greek myth, Orphee loses his wife and is told that he may go to the underworld and retrieve her if he takes her by the hand and never looks back. He fails at this and she is gone to him and he returns to the world of the living without her. In an affiliated legend, Orphee dies a bloody death years later but is consequently reunited with his wife Eurydice who has been waiting for him.
The original myth suggests a belief in a romantic love that endures past death, but one that specifically rewards monogamous faithfullness. But with stipulations:the reward is in the next world, with no promises regarding thisworldly happiness. Moreover, the Greeks didn't allow for what happens to the bonds formed with subsequent spouses of widowed people.
This clearly troubled Cocteau, as does his Catholic "till death do us part", wherein people are expected to never divorce or seek new lovers, and to not have mates in the afterlife. Cocteau's version is similarly unpromising with respect to thiswordly happiness, but since Heurtibise(Death's chauffeur) and Euridice secretly wish to be together, as do the "Princess"(i.e., Death) and Orphee, maybe in their failure they get what they want.
So Cocteau holds out hope in his retelling, adapting the myth to suit his purposes while he simultaneously mocks the importance of myth-making. (At one point Orphee is asked by one of the underworld judges if he is a writer. He replies that he is a poet, adding that "a poet is a writer who writes but isn't a writer.) With Heurtebise's help(and trick photography), Orphee goes back to the underworld to retrieve his wife. When he arrives he is made to testify in some sort of trial. He thinks he is on trial at first, but it is the princess, Death who is on trial, and it is through the process of the trial that he realizes that she loves him too. Later, he says to Death- Orphee:"Who gives the orders?"
Death:"They come to us, as if in a dream...or like the beating of jungle drums."
Orphee:"I will go to him who gives the orders."
Death:"Some think he imagines us. Others that he sleeps, and we are his dreams..." This exchange is the closest that Cocteau comes to offering a set of religious beliefs anywhere in Orphee. (Perhaps notably, one of the nonsense verses that come across the car radio earlier tells Orphee that the dreamer must listen to his dreams.) Cocteau is more concerned with mood than with plot per se, and I suppose this may trouble some viewers. But for me, the dream-like, atmospheric quality of this film is more than suitable compensation. The car radio is right...
 Sadness and Beauty October 28, 2000
The Princess of Death loved one man - which is not allowed. Beautiful sounds enhance the beautiful scenes and lead you into the world consists of love, death, and life. The Princess of Death sacrificed herself for Orphee in the end. I cannot forget the final scene that she leaves.
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