Le Testament d'Orphee

Jean Cocteau was one of the most prominent european poets of the first half of the twentieth century. His involvement with major artistic trends (especially Surrealism) is well documented and it was perhaps only a matter of time before he exploited the century's new medium as a means to generate a work full of vivid personal and allegorical imagery.

Le Testament d'Orphee follows the 1950 production of Orphee, which examined the life of a celebrated poet (alias Cocteau) and was marked by a tight cross-lacing of paranoid dreaming and poetic realism, and continues the author's obsession with his own life. As a result, Testament... is fairly obscure and may baffle those who know nothing about Cocteau' s works or life story

Features Yul Brynner and Cocteau's lover Jean Marais.

Review by Frank Manera
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96