Le Testament d'Orphée is an uneven work compared to the more achieved and better realized Orphée (to which it is very tightly related of course) and for this reason, may not appeal to everyone, even those who were enchanted by Cocteau's visual poetry in Orphée. There are of course a good number of puzzling scenes, but they remain quite tame compared to Le Sang d'un Poète, a much more hermetic and typically surrealistic film (a la Bunuel), and Cocteau's approach, far from being that of some elitist intellectual, is in fact caring for his audience. The imagery presented to us in Le Testament is often introduced by Cocteau's off voice and very often also, by himself on screen. I always felt welcome to his world, comfortable in his poetic universe, because he truly seems preoccupied by how we react to what is shown to us. The numerous scenes with the Hibiscus flower are at the heart of how the various components of Cocteau's clockwork interact for the benefit of his spectators. We marvel at simple things now: Cocteau debunks the symbolism of the second part of the Trilogy: we're reminded that Cégeste and Heurtebise are the fruits of an early poem by Cocteau. We are reunited with the Princess (Maria Casares) and Heurtebise (François Périer) at a tribunal where everything and everyone now seems to be less threatening, where everyone is taking oneself less seriously than in Orphée. Le Testament is truly a work of love, of true affection from Cocteau to everyone of us.
There is nothing pretentious here, and only a few philistines may remain impervious to Cocteau in the same way as they likely are to poetry in general. Poets are the least well understood workers in our society, and for the densest among us, they are probably completely useless parasites living out of public charity. But if Cocteau's message is to be of any significance today to his fellow humans, 50 years after his death, it is that poetry does not need to be some hermetic language published in expensive editions for a happy few enlightened elite cut from the rest of society. One of Cocteau's pioneering contributions is his use of the "cinématographe" – as he liked to refer to it – as a tool for a poet to convey the mechanics of his mind to something tangible. He often said (e.g. watch the fascinating documentary Jean Cocteau: Autoportrait d'un inconnu (1985) on the Criterion edition of Le Sang d'un Poète, a must-see to truly understand Cocteau's cinema) that the poet does not control what he thinks, what he imagines, etc.: he is merely a conduit between some immaterial but powerful source (call it God, the gods or whatever) and his fellow mortals. Cocteau was the first recognized published poet to use cinema successfully and creatively to express poetry from the privileged and original point of view of a poet. His most achieved work in this respect was La Belle et la Bête, but the Orphée "trilogy" is a close contender for that matter. Furthermore, unlike other surrealists and fellow artists of his era (such a brilliant one, with so many luminaries from times the likes of which we will never see again – ours is a whole different universe) whose output was mainly through painting and literature exclusively, Cocteau's poetic films are not only still among us, but through the contribution of scholars or simply cinema lovers, still resonate to this day and enjoy a second or third life thanks to the democratizing effect of digital technology. And this is where his effect and influence on us is at its most vivid and significant.
One can rightly argue that Cocteau's cinematographic book of tricks gets rapidly limited as we watch his films, and that his gimmickry may appear a little bit naive, especially to 21st-century eyes. However, one must be reminded that what we witness by viewing his films is the vision of a poet, and this is where the viewer must try to put him (her)self, i.e. to discard our unforgiving, CGI-saturated view of film images, and concentrate on the symbolism of Cocteau's universe.
This is why one should not watch the Testament d'Orphée before the better rounded up works, especially La Belle et la Bête, which is a true masterpiece. And as with all masterpieces, everything else, including one artist's other works, pales in comparison. But at least, Cocteau's language becomes better articulated and more understandable once we have been exposed to the most seamless of his poems.
There is nothing pretentious here, and only a few philistines may remain impervious to Cocteau in the same way as they likely are to poetry in general. Poets are the least well understood workers in our society, and for the densest among us, they are probably completely useless parasites living out of public charity. But if Cocteau's message is to be of any significance today to his fellow humans, 50 years after his death, it is that poetry does not need to be some hermetic language published in expensive editions for a happy few enlightened elite cut from the rest of society. One of Cocteau's pioneering contributions is his use of the "cinématographe" – as he liked to refer to it – as a tool for a poet to convey the mechanics of his mind to something tangible. He often said (e.g. watch the fascinating documentary Jean Cocteau: Autoportrait d'un inconnu (1985) on the Criterion edition of Le Sang d'un Poète, a must-see to truly understand Cocteau's cinema) that the poet does not control what he thinks, what he imagines, etc.: he is merely a conduit between some immaterial but powerful source (call it God, the gods or whatever) and his fellow mortals. Cocteau was the first recognized published poet to use cinema successfully and creatively to express poetry from the privileged and original point of view of a poet. His most achieved work in this respect was La Belle et la Bête, but the Orphée "trilogy" is a close contender for that matter. Furthermore, unlike other surrealists and fellow artists of his era (such a brilliant one, with so many luminaries from times the likes of which we will never see again – ours is a whole different universe) whose output was mainly through painting and literature exclusively, Cocteau's poetic films are not only still among us, but through the contribution of scholars or simply cinema lovers, still resonate to this day and enjoy a second or third life thanks to the democratizing effect of digital technology. And this is where his effect and influence on us is at its most vivid and significant.
One can rightly argue that Cocteau's cinematographic book of tricks gets rapidly limited as we watch his films, and that his gimmickry may appear a little bit naive, especially to 21st-century eyes. However, one must be reminded that what we witness by viewing his films is the vision of a poet, and this is where the viewer must try to put him (her)self, i.e. to discard our unforgiving, CGI-saturated view of film images, and concentrate on the symbolism of Cocteau's universe.
This is why one should not watch the Testament d'Orphée before the better rounded up works, especially La Belle et la Bête, which is a true masterpiece. And as with all masterpieces, everything else, including one artist's other works, pales in comparison. But at least, Cocteau's language becomes better articulated and more understandable once we have been exposed to the most seamless of his poems.