Description

Jean Cocteau’s update of the Orpheus myth depicts a famous poet (Jean Marais), scorned by the Left Bank youth, and his love for both his wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa), and a mysterious princess (Maria Casarès). Seeking inspiration, the poet follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead, through Cocteau’s famous mirrored portal. Orpheus’s peerless visual poetry and dreamlike storytelling represent the legendary Cocteau at the height of his powers.

Special Features

• New digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Audio commentary featuring French-film scholar James S. Williams
• Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown (1984), a feature-length documentary
• Jean Cocteau and His Tricks (2008), a video interview with assistant director Claude Pinoteau
• 40 Minutes with Jean Cocteau (1957), an interview with the director
• In Search of Jazz (1956), an interview with Cocteau on the use of jazz in the film
• La villa Santo-Sospir (1951), a 16 mm color film by Cocteau
• Gallery of images by French-film portrait photographer Roger Corbeau
• Raw newsreel footage from 1950 of the Saint-Cyr military academy ruins, a location used in the film
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by author Mark Polizzotti, an excerpted article by Cocteau on the film, and an essay on La villa Santo-Sospir by Williams