Le Testament d’Orphée (1960) - film review

A dying poet wandering through time finds himself before a court, accused of entering a world no mortal should see.  Found guilty of the charge of innocence, he is given the maximum sentence: life.  The poet yearns only to die so that he may be reborn and so achieve the immortality he craves.  With his companion, Cégeste, he revisits his past memories and finally discovers the path to immortality...

Jean Cocteau’s final film is a fitting conclusion to a remarkable artistic career spanning over fifty years.   The film manages to encompass all aspects of Cocteau’s creative genius and it is perhaps the best homage that cinema could offer him, whilst being a stunning work of art in its own right.

As the title suggests, Le Testament d’Orphée revisits Cocteau’s most successful and best-loved film, Orphée.  Now it is the turn of Cocteau, himself close to death, who must face the celestial court, embodied by two of his own creations (played brilliantly by María Casares and François Périer.  Cocteau’s crime?  To dare to be a poet, to dare to allow his mind to wander into places no mortal must visit…

The film completes a trilogy which began with Cocteau’s first film Le Sang d’un poète (1930).  That film, which was years ahead of its time in its use of visual imagery and cinematic technique, attempted to convey the spiritual torment of an artist torn between two competing forces: an uncontrollable creative impulse and the limitations of his own mortal imagination.  The themes were developed further in Cocteau’s subsequent film, Orphée (1949), in which a poet’s love for death results in the death of his own wife.  The film contains some powerful surreal symbolism and, like Le Sang d’un poète, there is no single unambiguous interpretation of what the spectator sees.    What the two films show us is the soul of a poet, laid bare with all its neuroses and complexes visible for all to see.  In the third and final film in this so-called Orphic series, Le Testament d’Orphée shows Cocteau himself on a pilgrimage towards his own immortality, having accomplished his work and justified himself before an Underworld court.

Le Testament d’Orphée is a living scrapbook of Cocteau’s own life and includes references to not just his films, but also his poetry and paintings.  In the film, he revisits the sets of his earlier films and bumps into innumerable past acquaintances and friends, including a surprising spectrum of well-known actors, including Yul Brynner, Brigitte Bardot, Jean Marais, Charlez Aznavour, to name just a few.  Jean-Pierre Léaud also appears in a small part, thanks to his friend and 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 Le Testament d’Orphée is shamelessly self-indulgent in places, it is, thanks to Cocteau’s gentle self-mockery and unfaltering artistic brilliance, an eye-opening and entertaining – albeit totally perplexing – film.  Some sequences, such as those shot using reverse-motion, are technical works of wonder and are breathtaking to watch.

The film was poorly received when it was first released in 1959.  With the passing of time, it has become to be recognised as a great work of cinema, and not just because of its historical significance (it was Cocteau’s last major work). Le Testament d’Orphée is an eloquent and beautifully crafted film in which the soul of a poet is revealed to almost heart-breaking effect.

© James Travers 2001

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