| The Orphic Trilogy (Criterion Collection) The best new three-disc DVD set you can buy right now is The Criterion Collection's release of Jean Cocteau's The Orphic Trilogy, which is an older series of movies. The three-disc set consists of four Jean Cocteau films directed between 1930 and 1960 and one documentary about his films and his life. Here is what is on each individual disc. Disc one: BLOOD OF A POET Before Cocteau made films he was a poet and a painter. When he picked up the camera to make this film in 1930 he decided to make a film very much in the tradition of the other arts. The story - such as it is - is told in three sections. The first part is about an artist who, after a whimsical accident, confronts a talking statue that convinces him to make an entrance through his mirror and experience what's on the other side. The second part involves the artist on "the other side" as he confronts a hallway and a series of doors that he slithers past. He stops at each door and peeps through the keyhole where he sees various odd, surrealistic activities. The third part involves a snowball fight, a dead boy, a card game, a guardian angel and a man with a gun all watched over by an affluent crowd high up in opera seats who ignore the action until someone dies. Then they applaud. It's a wild film, running just under an hour, that upon repeated viewings reveals further and further layers of meaning. The film is very much in the surrealist tradition although Cocteau points out -- in an essay that's offered on the disc -- that he made his film before "surrealism" was an official movement. Interestingly though the film was produced by the Viscount de Noailles the same man who also financed Luis Bunuel's controversial L'AGE D'OR. There is one essay and one part of a lecture by Cocteau (one on the inner leaf and one on the disc as a menu item) that are long and as inimitably insightful and poetic as only he could be. The film has not been restored for years but the transfer has been made from the original camera negative and despite a few evident scratches it is much better than anything available on video. There is a good documentary Jean Cocteau: Autobiograph of an Uknown by Edgardo Cozarinski that has a wealth of information. But, in order to get a full understanding of the film's references it should be seen after the other films in the set. Disc two: ORPHEUS This film, made in 1949, is considered by many critics to be his best film. It is based on the myth of Orpheus, a poet who falls in love with Death and must enter into the netherworld to save his wife Eurydice whom Death has taken too early. Orpheus (played by one of Cocteau's favorite actors Jean Marais), accompanied by Death's chauffeur Heurtebise (Francois Perier), enters the netherworld through his closet mirror and combats winds and funky netherworld gravity to get her back. He meets the Death princess (Maria Casarers), goes through a trial and wins Eurydice Maria Dea back but with the stipulation that if he ever looks at her she will disappear back into the netherworld limbo. It's a good myth but a better movie because Cocteau makes it work cinematically. One of the things that Cocteau was good at was the use of in-camera effects -- rather than computer effects -- to create other worldly looks. In particular he liked to film a scene backwards and then project it forwards. This is often accompanied by the use of tricky, off-kilter angels. For instance in both ORPHEUS and BLOOD OF A POET -- in order to make it seem that his characters are crawling along a wall in the netherworld -- he shot the characters crawling on the floor backwards with a camera set up on the ceiling. Then in the editing process the image gets shifted around giving it a ghostly floating style look. ORPHEUS is stunningly shot in black and white and the DVD transfer along with digitally restored sound does it justice. The disc also contains two essays by Cocteau. Disc three: TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS This film made in 1959 was to be Cocteau's last film and his most personal. He, himself, stars in the film as a poet taking a bizarre journey through time, his artwork, and his dreams. At once a self-reflexive philosophy on the poetry of cinema and surrealistic entertainment the film shows that Cocteau had a lot of cinematic ideas and it makes you wonder what he could have achieved had someone financed him more often. The world he presents is again a world where many things move in slow motion and inanimate objects move backwards. Flowers metamorphose back together again, each line of a painting disappears, a character leaps out of the ocean completely dry and things that have fallen down stand up again. Cocteau is visited by Cegeste (Edouard Dermit) -- one of the characters from Orpheus whom he left in the netherworld - who leads him around from his studio, through a mirror (again) to meet with two of the characters from Orpheus and into various corners of a fantastic world. The film contains a few cameos most notably by Yul Brenner who plays a gatekeeper to a woman statue who is guarded by Centaurs and Pablo Picasso, who is shown in a reaction shot with a group of people. The restoration work for both the image and sound is the best of the other films in the set. Although there is no restoration example you can watch the documentary on the first disc to compare and contrast the work that has been done to make The Testament of Orpheus look so sharp and clear. The disc also contains Cocteau's rarely seen short film La Villa Santo Sospir. The thirty-minute film is his only one shot in color and is a look inside a house that in the summer of 1950 he drew and painted expressive, mythical murals on every door and wall. He calls it a "tattooed villa" and it's an amazing walk though a unique house. Great too because it clearly displays Cocteau's range and talent as an artist. Cocteau once said that the only style worth developing is the style you develop for yourself. This three-disc set reveals many of the fascinating stylistic techniques and preoccupations that made his work to this day fresh, unique and exciting. Although Cocteau made a few other films, if one were to check out Beauty and The Beast (also available on Criterion) then they'd almost have a complete package of his film work. It would behoove anyone interested in Cocteau or in just how expressive the art of cinema can be to buy or rent this DVD trilogy. - Matt Langdon |
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