Having already published novels, plays and essays (including the 1929 novella Les Enfants Terribles – filmed in 1953 by Jean-Pierre Melville), Jean Cocteau made his film debut at the end of the first phase of European avant-garde filmmaking, on the cusp of the sound era.
1929 was the year of the first Luis Buñuel/Salvador Dali collaboration Un chien andalou. It was also the year in which Cocteau had turned 40. The following year, in collaboration with composer Georges Auric, Cocteau began work on Le sang d’un poète (The Blood of a Poet), his first venture into the world of the ‘cinématographe’. He described the film as ‘a vehicle of poetry, a séance of strip-tease’. Like the second Buñuel/Dali collaboration L’Age d’Or, The Blood of a Poet was privately funded by arts patron the Vicomte de Noailles as a present for his wife and the films undoubtedly share formal similarities including ironic subversion of visual meaning through voice-over or intertitles. However, whilst Buñuel’s film is a celebration of amour fou, in Cocteau’s film, the Poet-hero encounters archaic art, magic and ritual, China, opium and transvestism before dying in front of an indifferent audience whilst playing cards. Despite many similarities, Cocteau’s relationship with the surrealists was a turbulent one. Responding to their barbs, he replied ‘the only difference between myself and the surrealists is that I am a surrealist.’
Released six years before his death in 1963, The Testament of Orpheus (1957) was Cocteau’s swansong as a filmmaker. The film brings full circle the filmic journey begun in The Blood of a Poet with Cocteau himself in the role of an 18th century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. Boasting a bewilderingly eclectic cast (including Charles Aznavour, Yul Brynner, Pablo Picasso and Jean-Pierre Léaud), the film, according to Cocteau, ‘has nothing to do with dreams except that it borrows from the rigorous illogicality of dreams […] in addition it is realistic, if realism means a detailed painting of the intrigues of a universe that is personal to every artist and is totally unrelated to what we are used to accepting as reality.’
Featues Cocteau's first film, Le Sang d'un Poete (The Blood of a Poet) (1930) - a highly personal, deeply symbolic, surrealist fantasy, which transpires in a split second and Testament d'Orphee (1960), in which Cocteau takes on the role of a poet moving freely through time as he explores his life with humour, sensitivity and an unquenchable sense of wonder.
More highly collectable world cinema fare from a company that has rivalled Tartan’s domination of this arena. What we have here are two of the most famous surrealist m... more >
More highly collectable world cinema fare from a company that has rivalled Tartan’s domination of this arena. What we have here are two of the most famous surrealist masterpieces by Cocteau – astonishing works as compelling on the narrative level as they are in terms of their eye-opening imagery. < less
