Orpheus (1949)

Directed by Jean Cocteau. Starring Jean Marais, François Perier, Marie Déa, and Maria Casares.

Cocteau's film is a strange and wonderful retelling of the Orpheus myth, operating on the idea that (to quote the film's introduction) "a legend is entitled to be beyond time and place." And in the case of this film anyway, this wisdom applies. Of course, Cocteau inserts his own personal touches into the film as well, not least in the creation of one of the kinkiest love-quadrangles the big screen has ever seen: the titular poet (Marais), his wife Eurydice (Déa), Death herself (Casares), and her chauffeur Heurtebise (Perier). Some have complained (heck, I've even complained) that Casares lacked the presence to embody such a character as Death, especially in comparison to Cocteau's original choices for the role, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, but watching the film again changed my mind. It's because Casares is so life-sized and lonely in the role that the love entanglements are as poignant as they are- a larger-than-life actress might have tipped the balance too far in her favor, as well as seeming to be above needing the love of a mere mortal, Jean-Marais-handsome though he might be. Another immortal touch Cocteau brought to the film was his knack for making the real world surreal, not merely through editing and camera trickery (film run backwards for eerie effect, characters suddenly disappearing into thin air), but also through strange locations (a bombed-out building used as the realm of the dead) and surreal plot points (chiefly among them the car radio on which Orpheus listens to the bizarre "poetry"). Cocteau was a talented artist in many media, cinema being one of them, and ORPHEUS is on top of everything else one of the great films about the uneasy mix between art and life, in which life and art intrude onto each other, but in the end if the art is truly enduring then not even death- or Death- can take it from the world.