The Magic of Beginnings
by Alain Philippe
The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus and The Testament of Orpheus cover a 30- year period of Cocteau's work and trace his course in, what we name, the "orphic cycle" of the poet. Orpheus is the central link of this series being, at the same time, the most clear and narrative film of all three, as, in this one, Cocteau has used the entire Greek myth. The two other films framing Orpheus, (The Blood of a Poet and The Testament of Orpheus) by following a freer approach, shed light on the reasons the poet was so much attracted by this myth.
Because, if Orpheus is the original poet, he is, above all and at the same time, the one who crosses the frontier between life and death; he is the one who descends to the Underworld to find the woman he loves, knowing that he will not have the right to look at her. Beyond Cocteau's reasoning concerning Poetry or Immortality and beyond the somewhat brief unfolding of the trilogy's chapters (although sometimes they are enhanced by an ironic element), Cocteau offers us a guide to go through this trilogy.
Cocteau's ingenious approach lies in the fact that he confronted the myth of Orpheus as if cinema had already been invented. If Orpheus is largely based on the internal passage through the "zone" (this is name Cocteau gives to "no man's land", the limbo between life and death), in The Blood of a Poet Orpheus appears with his traditional characteristic, the lyre. However, the greatest emphasis is placed on the subject of the gaze, the passage and the initiation Π the three elements that characterize this trilogy.
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The Testament of Orpheus is a comeback to the free spirit that conceived The Blood of a Poet. Its logic is that of a dream (a very clear dream, free of the vagueness often typical of the idea of dream) and its rhetoric favours the metaphor (or the transposition) rather than the symbol: the spear that will kill the poet is accompanied by the sound of an airplane engine. The Poet "takes off". Liberated from any narrative obstacle, Cocteau is once again linked for the last time to everything he loved about cinema. The orphic concept, according to which "the poet must die several times in order to be reborn", is a theme Cocteau said that he had at his fingertips when making his first film; it is also a theme that was incorporated by the director in Orpheus. Here, the orphic concept has been incarnated through a distinct symphonic orchestration, revised and interpreted by Cocteau. Thanks to The Testament of Orpheus we feel the pleasure of recognising familiar subjects and heroes, but, here, they have been elevated and presented in an atmosphere of unlimited optimism. In the scenes where one would justly expect to see bitterness and sadness expressed by a man knowing that he makes his last film, the audience finds power and generosity; a valedictory speech with no tears. "I had thought that by changing tower, I would also change ghosts and that here, a flower would make them run away," says Cocteau in the film. Indeed, he tries to draw a flower but once more his own portrait appears in the painting. "Always the same Orpheus, always the same Oedipus." Always the Narcissus, he could have also added: Cocteau pretends to have discovered that a director always makes the film that draws his self-portrait. Knowing this, he plays with it, the same way he plays when he uses all of his tricks in order to offer his friends a brilliant death celebration; because, Cocteau is both a magician and a cunning personality. The Testament of Orpheus is a huge firework with a special brightness where words, sounds and images flare.
At the end of the film, in order to prove that he does not bear any grudges, Cocteau reverses his images by transfiguring Orpheus' black angels into harmless motorcyclists. When in the last scene we see the young men in a '60s car and listen to Cocteau saying, "A joyful wave comes to sweep away my valedictory film," we do not feel sorrow. Instead, we listen to the friendly salute of an older director to the young "nouvelle vague", which had just embarked on its film-making career and one of its members (Franois Truffaut) had provided Cocteau with the necessary means to make his last film: a reciprocally generous gesture. It is true that, not only Truffaut and his friends had saluted Cocteau quite early on as a master, but also Cocteau himself demonstrated a remarkable youthfulness until the end. "Nouvelle vague" was not the only movement that recognised Cocteau as a master; today, more young directors than before are grateful to this genius Renaissance man, who knew better than anyone else how to "shed light on his night".