THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS (1960}

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

I confess one of the reasons I revisited both of Jean Cocteau's famous "Orpheus" films is because this one, 1960's TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS, was rumored to include an appearance by Brigitte Bardot, who passed the previous month. By all indications, the pouty-lipped blonde above is not Bardot, but Annette Stroyberg, the Bardot-lookalike whom director Roger Vadim married immediately after he and Dear Brigitte divorced.

But once one knows that-- so what? I'm sure Cocteau fooled a lot of French people with the Bardot-imposture. And though TESTAMENT has no cast members credited except for "The Poet" (Cocteau himself), some players are iconic enough to compel recognition, such as Yul Brynner and Jean Marais, while others are famous primarily for their roles in ORPHEUS, as with Princess Death (Maria Casares) and Heurtebise (Francoise Perier). Toward the picture's end Cocteau the Poet tells the audience that he included these celebrities (hence the lack of advertising) because he considered them his "friends." But then why the Bardot imposture? Because she was not his "friend?" More likely, as in most of TESTAMENT's set-pieces, he just threw in anything that appealed to his sense of fun. The characters that Cocteau channels from ORPHEUS aren't really faithful recreations of the originals; they're more like playing cards whom the poet reshuffles for a new game.

I could go into great mythopoeic detail about why I think Cocteau chose (say) to have his poet-self killed off by Athena (Claudine Auger), a deity not predominantly associated with poetry. But in most if not all the film's bewildering set-pieces, Cocteau juxtaposes banal imagery with profound imagery, as if he's trying to confound even his ardent fans. Could he be trying to say that both the banal and the profound are inextricable parts of real experience? Qui sait? I critiqued this Bob Burden's FLAMING CARROT story on the theory that Burden did have a linear narrative hidden beneath all the attempts at randomness. But I won't attempt that with Cocteau, because I feel as if every profound image is meant to be undermined by random occurrences that mean nothing to anyone but Cocteau and possibly his inner circle. For that reason, I term TESTAMENT an "irony" rather than a drama like ORPHEUS, given that in Cocteau's farewell film it's possible to choose any particular set of images over any other.

If TESTAMENT has any sort of structure, it might be a sort of career overview/confessional poem, in which the artist celebrates all of his favorite creations and/or motifs. Cocteau died three years after the film's release. I don't know if the French artist knew the works of Irish poet Willliam Butler Yeats. However, one of the last poems Yeats released before his passing, "The Circus Animal's Desertion," includes a strong resemblance to TESTAMENT's apparent theme in the verse's closing stanza.

Those masterful images because completeGrew in pure mind but out of what began?A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slutWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder's goneI must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.