Orpheus
Performance Notes
Orpheus (Orphée), Jean Cocteau’s second film in the Orphic Trilogy, is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, a son of Apollo and a celebrated poet and musician who attempts to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld. Cocteau’s surrealist film follows the poet Orpheus as he turns away from a world in which he is shunned toward the underworld’s promise of inspiration. His poetic meditation on this classic story avoids direct adaptation and simplistic narrative formulas. Cocteau wrote of Orpheus: “When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming…. There is nothing more vulgar than works that set out to prove something. Orphée, naturally, avoids even the appearance of trying to prove anything.”
Approximate running time: 90 minutes