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Sorry, this movie sucks

Overrated

Great Film overall

Don't listen to the negative reviews

While I had surely seen the second film in Cocteau's Orpheus trilogy if not the first as well, I suspect I was in no position to appreciate any of what Cocteau accomplished. Now I'm about the same age he was when he did the Testament. I remember the time period for the second and third pictures, having grown up in it. But how all three of these films really transcend time as Cocteau is trying to show you works of art should! I had to rely on the subtitles for the sense of the lines but it was no matter. I don't remember anything else like these films. They are political to the extent they lobby for the poet's point of view. And in spite of the black and white and old prints their effect is most striking. Orpheus Descending and Testament sometimes look like the inspiration for Rebel Without a Cause. And Testament has some pithy comments on modern technology and the short comings of air travel that seem funnier and more relevant today. And toward the end of Testament, having the red blood and the red hibiscus in this black and white movie--how many times has that been imitated by computer technology? But it is what the poet saw then, not what technology makes commonplace and commercial today.On the discs for Blood of the Poet and Testament are two separate bonus features, documentaries of Cocteau in fading Technicolor--but oh how interesting they are as well. At some point Cocteau says it was Picasso who taught them all to see. But what a treasure trove of talent Paris produced in the first half of the twentieth century. I hope this kind of sharing of artistic discovery can take place on the internet. Maybe it is already happening and I just don't know it. But I do know people who care for serious--but not heavy and sometimes witty--artistic expression, let alone movies, should see all three of these movies and the docs which accompany them.

The third film in the so-called Orphic Trilogy of Jean Cocteau, Testament Of Orpheus (Le Testament D'Orphée, Ou Ne Me Demandez Pas Pourquoi!), is also the third film in The Criterion Collection release boxed set, and while it's the best of the trio it's nowhere near a good film. It does have perhaps the best scoring, and a dozen or so moments in its eighty minutes that have some spark of creativity, but Cocteau is so narcissistic and the film so self-indulgent and replete with outdated special effects, such as Cocteau running film in reverse on numerous occasions, that one feels almost embarrassed for him. Also, the previous two entries in the trilogy set the bar so low that Cocteau did not really have to do much to improve upon their failures, and he didn't do much.Despite his claims to the contrary, Cocteau was certainly no poet of any stature, and his lack of writing skill can be seen in this undeniably dreadful screenplay, loaded with the most clichéd claims about poetry and art, and the most banal and absurd imagery imaginable- even as Cocteau believes it is deep. Part of the odd charm of the film, and its predecessors, is that Cocteau really does believe the crap he spews. At one point in the film he even states, 'It is the unique power of the cinema to allow a great many people to dream the same dream together and to present illusion to us as if it were strict reality. It is, in short, an admirable vehicle for poetry.' Not only is the sentiment false and highfalutin', but it's read by Cocteau with such earnest inanity that one wonders whether he really could believe such tripe and not have to restrain a guffaw.Testament Of Orpheus is the least embarrassing of the so-called Orphic Trilogy, but it still does not rise above the sci fi schlock of the 1950s, films which often had bold premises, but failed merely in technical and acting aspects. This film is not even bold. It's puerile and trite, and Cocteau is an embarrassment to all real poets. The cinematography by Roland Pontoizeau is often framed poorly, and the music by Georges Auric is woefully inappropriate in many places. Had Cocteau actually been a real artist, this film, and perhaps the whole trilogy and his canon, may have been intriguing glimpses into meta-film, decades before the twin banes of Abstract Expressionism and Postmodernism dulled contemporary painting and literature. Even the often repetitive Charlie Kaufman scripted films of recent years are leagues ahead of this garbage, in terms of narrative twists, depth, and real characterization. Instead, Cocteau was a jack of all arts, and a master of none, a narcissistic unwitting walking cliché in the flesh. I tire of apologists for this sort of manifestly bad art who always try to claim that a work of art that is so terrible is simply 'too deep', or any other such nonsense, to be properly critiqued. While truly great art has often been dismissed in this manner by bad critics, Testament Of Orpheus is not only not great art, but manifestly bad art. Its premises and claims are easily seen through, for they are so shallow, and that is what kills it as a film. One can only wonder what part they had in Cocteau's demise. One can dream, can't one?

Modernist renaissance man directed quite a few groundbreaking masterpeices in his time, like the hallucinatory Beauty and the Beast and Blood of a Poet, basically setting the stage for art directors ranging from Ingmar Bergman to Jean-Luc Godard. But here, he made a film so tired and silly looking, it almost crosses the line into so-bad-it's-good.The film basically consists of the elderly Cocteau himself, wandering through a world of people in crazy-ass costumes, and making faces that bear a striking resemblance to Bela Lugosi's horrified looks in Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda. There are also some elementary special effects (backwards film, for example) that are somewhat less than mind blowing, even by 1960 standards.Interestingly, the incredulous person staring a people in costumes was done much better 2 years later in Herk Harvey's low budget horror film Carnival of Souls, which, unlike the Testament of Orpheus, is a must see.

There are nice ideas in this final film by Cocteau. It's a pity he made it in 1959: there had already been Bunuel's l'Age d'or (1930) and Un chien andalou (1929), Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) and The Seventh Seal (1957) that are all brilliant. Not to mention Cocteau's own Sang d'un poete (1930!), in which the relatively simple technical ideas of Testament d'Orphee were already worked out and even better too. Cocteau utilizes terribly slow motion and awkward backwards play. Where Orpheus was ambitious, this is mere pretentious. The acting is mediocre, despite the interesting cast (Cocteau, Brynner, Picasso). Testament is less thought provoking and less surprising than what I hoped for, but nevertheless worth a try. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for conversations about eloquence and poetry at the time. Still it is at least as interesting as Orson Welles' F for Fake (1975) in which Cocteau also appeared so prominently.7/10