Eurydice is a whiner
The BFI is having a Jean Cocteau festival, so yesterday afternoon, in another derisory attempt at getting myself out of my present pit of greyness, I gratefully let J propel us towards the Ciné lumière to watch Orphée.
I knew and love La belle et la bête, the enigmatic, oneiric illustration of the fairy tale, with all its dark twists preserved, long before it was pushed through the Disney grinder. In that film too, Cocteau had cast his life-time lover Jean Marais. In both films Cocteau’s camera lingers lovingly over his Aryan mane and sculpted torso, over his sharp cheekbones and strong virile jaw; in both films Jean Marais delivers his lines, rolls his eyes, throws tantrums with the OTT treatment of the 50s. In la belle et la bête it didn’t matter so much though – one of his two parts was very short, and the other involved a furry mask. In Orphée, his delivery is painfully dated, but you have to forgive him; he does look so good.
Much in the film, long hailed as the masterpiece of magical film-making, is disjointed; I found myself constantly reaching into my memory for long-forgotten details of the original Greek myth as a guide. On leaving the cinema I was slightly disappointed; I didn’t expect, in a Cocteau film, to find myself laughing at the washing-up gloves used as keys to the underworld. But when the dated acting and props fade away- because they do, what remains is this : Orphée wants to get beyond the limits of human experience, he wants to reach the unknowable - the mystery beyond mortality. Orphée in Cocteau’s world is his alter ego, the successful, popular poet who is envied by the younger poets; his conflicts, his desire to renew himself, his feverish listening for signals from the source of mystery, are the substance of the film. I was also fascinated to see dark, troubled, passionate Maria Casares as his Death; attended by her oaring, leather-clad motorcyclists - the hooded messengers of death - she is mystery incarnate.
Maybe some of those 50s films, like Les enfants du paradis, should only been seen when fairly young, less dismissive, not yet jaded or spoiled; when cinematography and acting still mean nothing to you, when you know nothing of the director’s love life, and when magical keys into the underworld look nothing like rubber washing-up gloves.