Jay Rohr
Orphée is a fabulous reminder that cinema puts the unreal within reach. This poetic motion picture from 1950 provides more than the retelling of a classical myth. It showcases the potential of movies to transport people into dreamlike realms, especially through the careful application of special effects. In a way, it’s also an ideal exhibit in the argument for more practical FX, especially in an era of advancing AI slop.
The film is the second part of what became the “Orphic Trilogy.” Three movies composed by Jean Cocteau across several decades, the assortment includes 1930’s Le sang d’un poète (The Blood of a Poet, Orphée (Orpheus), and finally Le testament d’Orphée (Testament of Orpheus) in 1960. Utilizing phantasmagoric imagery, Cocteau explores “the complex relationships between the artist and his creations, reality and the imagination.”
In many ways, The Blood of a Poet is the more experimental. Cocteau’s first feature film, the movie is almost a test of the poetic possibilities inherent in motion pictures. The director once stated he wanted to “avoid the deliberate manifestations of the unconscious in favor of a kind of half-sleep through which I wandered as though in a labyrinth… that is why this film, which has only one style… presents many surfaces for its exegesis. Its exegeses were innumerable. If I were questioned about any one of them, I would have trouble in answering.”
Arguably a pre-surrealist movie, The Blood of a Poet helped set the tone for any such cinema which followed. There’s a clear link to this kind of mechanism which allows the mind to relax, leading to memories interweaving with the images on screen and producing an emotional reaction in audiences. This method of stirring the subconscious is clearly seen in flicks by filmmakers such as Yorgos Lanthimos, Jane Schoenbrun, Federico Fellini, and David Lynch.
Jean Cocteau was, if nothing else, a prolific creative. He produced numerous plays, novels, poems, paintings, and films. Yet, he often regarded himself as a poet regardless of the medium. As such, he once observed, “The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.”
During the time between The Blood of the Poet and what would become Orphée, Cocteau crafted numerous notable projects. His 1934 stage play La Machine Infernale retold the tale of Oedipus, lifting “characters familiar from Greek tragedy off their pedestals and wittily humanized them while remaining true to Sophocles’ plot.” He also filmed the sublime adaptation of the fairy tale La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) in 1946. That one alone helped the filmmaker acquire techniques that would only improve the Orphic Trilogy.
As Jeremy Carr observed, regarding La Belle et la Bête, “mise-en-scène radiates an exquisite rendering of air, light, and texture. Heightening the charmed expressiveness of the picture… whimsical slow-motion, reversed action, and a series of graceful movements (Day is at one point placed upon a small, hidden wagon, gliding along the castle’s corridors), and the oftentimes surreal vision is enriched by… the special effects, low-key though they may be, are nevertheless awesome and thoroughly efficient.”
Similar simple effects can be seen throughout Orphée. For instance, the illusion of individuals gliding along seemingly supernaturally. Such tricks highlight that it isn’t grand scale so much as effective utilization which matters most. Special effects don’t have to be epic to be impactful.
Meanwhile, Jean Cocteau uses just enough of the myth for audiences to be familiar with the basic plot points, which, in turn, inform the themes the director is aiming at. This means the audience is primed to comprehend the picture, while simultaneously allowing him to paint his personal take on the major players. Essentially, Orpheus becomes a vessel for Cocteau’s own autobiographical aspects as well as cultural examinations, especially those about art.
The purpose of all those across the whole creative spectrum is often subject to reevaluation. With every major historical event, the necessity and intentions of artists, whatever their medium, typically experience a paradigm shift. For Cocteau and many others, the World Wars inspired an inclination towards surrealism. The presentation of the subconscious mind is one of its hallmarks.
With Orphée, Jean Cocteau conceived an opportunity to explore thematic notions through surreal symbolism that captured a touch of reality thanks to myth. The classic Greek narrative of Orpheus, like most mythology, occupies an intriguing place where unreal elements such as gods and ghosts inhabit the same space as real people. This juxtaposition of the fictional coexisting alongside actual human beings lends the phantastic some flesh of its own.
As Christian Zgoll wrote in Mythische Sphärenwechsel: Methodisch neue Zugänge zu antiken Mythen in Orient und Okzident, “A myth can be defined as an Erzählstoff [narrative material] which is polymorphic through its variants and… in which transcending interpretations of what can be experienced are combined into a hyleme sequence with an implicit claim to relevance for the interpretation and mastering of the human condition.”
That academic mouthful might choke a few readers, so it’s fortunate that Cocteau simplified the notion in the opening of Orphée with a question asked and answered, “Where does our story take place and when? A legend is entitled to be beyond time and place — interpret it as you wish!”
The central story of Orphée follows successful poet Orpheus as he becomes increasingly obsessed with Death personified. This alienates his loving wife, Eurydice. When she dies, Orpheus races into the underworld not so much to be with her but rather Death. This results in them standing before a tribunal which rules that Eurydice was taken illegally. They order her returned to life, though Orpheus may never look upon her again. Later, when he glances at Eurydice in a mirror, she vanishes. Not long after, an angry mob kills Orpheus. Reunited with Death, he discovers this has all been part of a plot so that she may die, making him immortal. The tribunal, however, undoes all of this, sending Eurydice and Orpheus back with no memory of events as Death is led away to an ambiguous fate.
Orphée is a blend of myriad genres. There’s a touch of romantic comedy, spy thriller, investigative mystery, and melodrama. Strange radio messages (recited by Cocteau) lend a taste of espionage to a post-war European setting that simultaneously tells the tale of love dissolving and two hearts entwining. Along the way is a look at fame and the price a person pays for success, especially in an art form that enshrines outsiders. All of this is then in service of an oneiric exploration of life, love, and death.
Scenes can be viewed simply as they are or be interpreted as symbolic. For instance, Death in female form being forced to sit for the judgment of a tribunal of seemingly ordinary men carries a variety of interpretations about society, gendered hierarchies, etc. Even the framing of the men in camera hints at a kind of gay gaze, considering the director never hid his sexuality. What makes Orphée full of surreal meaning, however, is often a series of simple camera tricks.
Early on, Orpheus is transported out of the city in a Rolls-Royce limo. The classic rear projection trick is used to make the vehicle appear in motion. This involves projecting “a moving picture onto the back of a translucent screen… creating an effect whereby both the background on the screen and the foreground action are combined into a single image.” When the limo enters a more mystical environment, signified by crossing railroad tracks, the rear projection is switched to a negative.
It isn’t a complicated trick, but it is highly effective at conveying a different reality. Jean Cocteau would then later utilize rear projection to enhance the surreal nature of the underworld. As Heurtebise (François Périer) leads Orpheus into this realm, the two performers are not technically in the same space. François Périer is in the foreground, hair being blown by a wind machine, while Jean Marais as Orpheus follows in a rear-projected performance.
The artifice lends a sense of unreality to the moment, particularly by allowing Heurtebise to appear in motion though he remains motionless. To enhance the moment more so, Cocteau has a glazier shuffle through the scene as if unintentionally intruding on the foreground. He then walks out of frame only to reappear moments later in the rear projection. In essence, it joins the two spaces, implying any sense of distortion is part of the environment characters occupy. The dead are more clear in the underworld, while the living seem artificial and out of place.
To enter this land, Orpheus is given a pair of surgical gloves which permit him to pass through a mirror as if it were water. The hand coverings themselves go on magically thanks to replaying the scene in reverse. Jean Marais is then shown advancing towards a body double, the main performer playing his own reflection. When he touches the mirror, the glass is instead a pool of mercury, permitting him to slowly dip gloved hands into the reflective fluid.
None of the techniques are complicated. Yet, it all builds like the setup of an illusionist, priming the audience to experience a surreal moment. The danger of handling that much mercury may be why modern moviemakers might opt for CGI, but the effectiveness of the imagery has caused it to ripple across the history of cinema. Several films have mimicked the moment, perhaps the most famous being 1999’s The Matrix.
When Orpheus is inevitably killed by the Bacchantes, represented here by a youthful mob from the Café des Poètes, he must return to the underworld. As Heurtebise escorts him, the journey comes across as much more different, though no less unreal. At one point, the two men round a street corner only to slide along the wall as if they’ve fallen off a cliff.
It’s hard to do the moment justice in mere words, which proves the power of motion pictures. To achieve the desired effect, Jean Cocteau filmed a street set shot from above. The performers are essentially walking across the floor. At one point, they pass a figure seated in a window. This individual is actually lying on their back. Still, it lends a sense of perspective to the audience who view everything as right side up. When the two men come to the corner, a forced perspective painting makes a ramp seem like an ordinary wall as they slide down it out of frame.
Cocteau didn’t need an elaborate psychedelic landscape to suggest a shift in reality. He simply used a negative reel. Mercury mimicked a mirror better than CGI ever could, and I say that because there’s a perceivable hesitance in the hands as they go in which isn’t merely acting. It’s the hesitance of touching that much liquid metal. That aspect of a performance is something that can never be put into computer-animated or AI-generated material because it can’t be planned for.
While working on La Belle et la Bête, Jean Cocteau embraced special effects tricks that went back to the earliest era of cinematic trickery. Things that Georges Méliès employed, which were inspired by the illustrious illusionist Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin. “Cocteau was keen to depict a ‘direct marvellous’, based solely on the resources of tinkering and ingenuity, and leaving, during the shooting, a large room for error, for accident, to produce a fortuitous, unpremeditated marvellous film.”
Everything that appears in CGI or generative AI is the result of a specific intention. There’s no room for accidental emotions. Consider the anecdote about Hans Gruber in Die Hard. But, everything about such spectacle has become a means to overwhelm the audience rather than enhance the emotional core. With Orphée, Cocteau understood that images must be in service of the story. Moreover, they needn’t be complicated to be magnificent. Even better, these are techniques anyone with a camera and basic editing can pull off.
