Orphee details
| Format: | PG DVD |
|---|---|
| Starring: | Jean Marais, Francois Perier, Maria Casares |
| Director: | Jean Cocteau |
| Genre: | World Cinema - French |
| Studio: | BFI VIDEO |
| Name | Discs | |
|---|---|---|
Orphee |
PG Feature |
DVD Information
| Run time: | 1 hour 35 minutes |
|---|---|
| Rental release: | 30 Sep 2003 |
| Main languages: | French |
| Subtitles: | English |
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Most helpful review
Wonderfully odd and original
By Melon from East Sussex , 25 Oct 2004[Highly rated reviewer]
This is an incredibly inventive and original movie that still feels new 50 years on. There's simply nothing around like it.
Orpheus begins a mutual obsession with Princess Death who has his wife killed (by weird motorpsycho assasins) so he travels into the Underworld to save her by putting on some gloves which mean he can walk through mirrors. However when he brings her back he must never look at her again otherwise she'll die, again. No description will really do this film justice, it has to be seen to be believed, if only for their sheer gall it has for trying to get away with what it does. The sense of magical unreality veers between enchanting and crass, but this is a film with more ideas in five minutes than many film-makers manage throughout their entire career.
The effects range from the primitive to the perfect, even more astounding given the age of the movie. This is essential viewing for cineastes or just those who fancy something a little different.- Was this review helpful to you?
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(20)Not Convincing Hybrid of Real and Nonreal
By Seedyvee (183 reviews) from Grantham , 18 Feb 2013It is good to see the cinema medium used in a more surrealist way but this plot seemed contrived and abstruse compared with the original legend of Orpheus. The combination of realism and para-realism did not quite work and the acting appeared highly stylised when it should have been natural. On the other hand the more paranormal effects were too remiscent of second-rate sc-fi.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Gripping and hauntingly strange
By erp (67 reviews) from Manchester , 12 Nov 2011[Highly rated reviewer]
This is an gripping, hauntingly strange take on the Greek myth.
Paradoxically, one of the things that makes it so compelling is the very plain, matter of fact way in which the things that happen in this life are presented. It's the almost banal way it's presented that really makes us feel the impossibility of the condition imposed on Orpheus and Eurydice as the price of Eurydice's return. It's in part its contrast with this kind of literal-minded ordinariness that makes the world of the dead seem so alien and mysterious.
Another aspect of the strangeness of Cocteau's film is the way he inverts the meaning of the myth. In this version the true story of love and loss is not that of Orpheus and Eurydice but that of Orpheus's Death and of her assistant Heurtebise, and theirs are the most sensitively acted parts.
This inversion is full of elusive suggestions which will give me much to think about in future viewings.- Was this review helpful to you?
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L'oiseau chante avec ses doigts - The bird sings with its fingers
By gerirowe (5 reviews) , 20 Sep 2011I first watched this film as a student in the 70s and was immediately seduced. Jean Marais is the poet who seeks to recover his wife from the Queen of the Underworld played with glacial charm by Maria Casarès (very interesting to contrast her role here with the deeply attached wife she depicts in Les Enfants du Paradis). Perhaps a highlight is the car that broadcasts snatches of surrealist imagery that help to entice the poet to his doom. These allegedly found their origin in the cryptic messages broadcast to France from Britain during the war. Lovely film.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Orphee
By speedycritic (17 reviews) from Cardiff , 01 Jan 2010Although a fan of European cinema, the flights of fantasy leave the project groundless as an end result. Admirable though a reworking of Greek legend could be, the film is to my mind marred by the director's desire to tie in recent French history and surrealist imagery. However,
could there be a worse performance on celluloid than that of Jean Marais in this piece.- Was this review helpful to you?
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oh no-me/oh yes him
By PGJ (4 reviews) from Plymouth , 11 Jul 2009I fell asleep and he stayed up. Why? It rocked his world via its post Occupation sensibilities. What does this mean? If you ask me its slightly kinky in a tightly wrapped, repressed manner. Think on; it may be your kind of thing too .- Was this review helpful to you?
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