ORPHEUS

Jean Cocteau’s lushly lyric, allegorical update of the Orpheus myth, based on his play of the same title, depicts a famous poet (Jean Marais) who’s scorned by the Left Bank youth, torn between his love for his wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa), and a mysterious, black-clad princess (Maria Casarès). Seeking inspiration, the poet follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead, a dreamlike journey that begins with his passage through Cocteau’s famous mirrored portal and into a cinematic landscape in which everything shimmers and shivers with nightmare luminosity. ORPHEUS’s peerless visual poetry and dreamlike storytelling represent the legendary surrealist Cocteau at the height of his powers.

"A magical film where each image, like the lark in the mirror, reflects only itself, that is to say, us." - Jean-Luc Godard