Cocteau's last film is as personal and private as its title suggests, and it makes little sense for viewers unfamiliar with his other work.
Testament of Orpheus(Le Testament d'Orphée)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France · 1960
1h 20m
Director Jean Cocteau
Starring Jean Cocteau, Edouard Dermithe, Henri Crémieux, François Périer
Genre Drama, Fantasy
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In his last film -- also the last part of the Orphic Trilogy -- legendary filmmaker Jean Cocteau portrays an eighteenth-century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets several symbolic phantoms that bring about his death and resurrection.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Some may find this sprawling film hard to adjust to, but for those who can, it is a real find. With an imaginative plot and an amusing direction, this charming film is a fitting way to end Cocteau's career.
A self-crafted elegy starring Cocteau as himself, an artist at the end of his life wandering through a symbolic landscape filled with his own creations (and guest stars Yul Brynner and Pablo Picasso). In the end, Cocteau takes comfort in the immortality of art, and therefore his own immortality, a sentiment that would seem far less moving and far more egotistical if it weren't true.
The New Yorker by Richard Brody
With one foot in the French New Wave and the other in the Ballets Russes, Cocteau fits a raging confession into a serene, sensuous neoclassical vessel.
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