A masterpiece of magical filmmaking. Though it is a narrative treatment of the legend of Orpheus in a modern Parisian setting, this film, written and directed by Jean Cocteau, is as inventive and as enigmatic as a dream. Orpheus (Jean Marais), the successful poet who is envied and despised by younger poets, needs to renew himself; he tries to push beyond the limits of human experience, to reach the unknowable—the mystery beyond morality. Dark, troubled, passionate Maria Casarès is his Death: attended by her roaring motorcyclists, the hooded messengers of death, she is mystery incarnate. The jazzy modern milieu has urgency, and Cocteau uses emblems and images of the then recent Nazi period and merges them with more primitive images of fear—as, indeed, they are merged in the modern consciousness. This gives the violence and mystery of the Orpheus story a contemporaneity that, in other hands, might seem merely chic; Cocteau's special gift was to raise chic to art. The death figure and much of the film's imagery derive from the American movie Death Takes a Holiday (1934), starring Fredric March; the only modern film image of death that, visually and psychologically, stands comparison with Maria Casarès is in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957).

Direction: Jean Cocteau.

Screenplay: Jean Cocteau.

Photography: Nicholas Hayer.

Editing: Jacqueline Sadoul.

Music: Georges Auric.

Jean Marais.........................................................Orpheus

Maria Casarès..............................................The Princess

Maria Déa...........................................................Eurydice

François Périer.................................................Heurtebise

Juliette Gréco.....................................................Algaonice

Edouard Dermithe.................................................Cégeste