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Film

Jean Cocteau: The Orphic Trilogy

Saturday, July 12, 2008

1 p.m.

Film at SFMOMA is generously supported by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein.

Le Sang d’un poète (Blood of a Poet)
Jean Cocteau, 1930, 55 min.
A landmark of surrealist cinema, Cocteau’s first film attempts to reveal the inside of a poet’s mind and utilizes a panoply of trick effects and extraordinary juxtapositions to do so. Lee Miller portrays a statue that comes to life, opening the way to a world beyond. Enrique Rivero plays the poet.

Orphée (Orpheus)
Jean Cocteau, 1949, 95 min.
This is, without a doubt, Cocteau’s best film. Orphée is clearly based on the ancient myth in which Orpheus (Jean Marais) descends into the underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa), from death. Cocteau’s vision of the afterlife is rooted in modern realities: a bombed-out urban landscape, for example, and messages from the other side communicated through a car radio.