You know the worst thing about watching American Idol live? I have to tune to Fox a few minutes before seven, and Two and a Half Men reruns are on, and it sucks. Why can’t they have, say, Arrested Development reruns, or Family Guy reruns, or something good reruns? No. Two and a Half Men.

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This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers’ 100 Favorite Non-English Films.

Orpheus
France 1950; dir: Jean Cocteau
starring: Jean Marais, María Casares, Maria Déa, François Périer
screened 3/1/08, Criterion DVD

“The death of a poet requires a sacrifice to make him immortal.”

Unrelated to Orpheus, but a milestone nonetheless, this is the 500th post on this blog. Woohoo! Okay, back to the business at hand.

Previous Viewing Experience: Have never seen it before.

Knowledge Before Viewing: I know absolutely nothing about the story; but it forms a sort of trilogy with two other Cocteau films, Blood of a Poet and The Testament of Orpheus. I have actually seen Blood of a Poet, but a LONG time ago, and I mostly didn’t get it because it’s on the surrealist side. But I’m looking forward to Orpheus (despite the appearance of having put it off for, like two months), at least in part because Cocteau’s La belle et la bête is one of my all-time favorite films.

Brief Synopsis: Orpheus, a poet in post-war France, finds himself caught up with Death in the visage of a beautiful woman and her minions. When Death takes his wife Euridyce, Orpheus follows them into the underworld–but is it really Euridyce he desires, or is it Death herself?

Initial Viewing Response: Jean Cocteau was as much a poet as a filmmaker, and his films are poetic to their very core. The acting, writing, narration, music, visuals, and effects all come together to create a heightened mood — not realistic in any normal use of the word, but hyperreal. Or you could say surreal, I suppose, though Orpheus is much more closely aligned with the fairy-tale mood of La belle et la bête than the surrealism of Blood of a Poet. Although I should probably rewatch Blood of a Poet because I could be misremembering it horribly (in fact, I tend to get it mixed up in my head with Buñuel’s Un chien andalou, which may be a disservice to both of the films).

In any case, as you may have guessed, the story transplants and modifies the Greek Orpheus myth, in which the poet/musician spent so much time with his music that he ignored his wife, Euridyce. When she died, he went into the underworld to get her, and Hades allowed Euridyce to return to life with Orpheus on the condition that Orpheus could not look at her until they reached the world of the living. Impatient, Orpheus turned to look at her as they came near the exit of the underworld, and she was reclaimed by Hades. In Cocteau’s version (which may be another version of the myth, I’m not sure), the stipulation said that he could never look at her again, ever. And in any case, by that time, Orpheus was too infatuated with Death to be much interested in Eurydice at all. Another layer is added by the character of Herteubise, Death’s chauffeur and messenger, who falls in love with Eurydice while Orpheus is obsession over Death.

I won’t say I completely understand the film (did Death change her mind somewhere in the middle about what she wanted, or was the entire thing an elaborate plot on her part to balance Orpheus’s poetic obsessions with his domestic life?), but it was mesmerizing and beautiful to watch. And if you don’t know by now, I might as well say: I appreciate films more for the experience I have while watching them and the images they engrave on my consciousness than for pretty much anything else, and usually, the more ambiguous the point of the film, the more beautiful I find it. Cocteau’s special effects are simple and obvious, but they’re some how much more effective (and affective) than more elaborate, realistic effects would have been. Orpheus’s difficulty walking in the no-man’s land between the two worlds, the double-exposures revealing Death’s entry into this world and the glimpses of the other through mirrors, the filmed-backwards shots of Orpheus putting on the underworld gloves which suggest that time may not be working as we expect–all are clearly heightened, obvious effects, but they fit in perfectly with the poetic tone of the film.

There are a lot of things to think about; many quotes and ideas could be followed down philosophical rabbit trails, from the quote I used about about the immortality of a poet depending on a sacrifice (isn’t it in some ways true that poets must die before they can live forever–very few great artists are recognized as such during their life), to the connection of mirrors with death (Herteubise suggests that every time we look in a mirror, we see death). The problem with thinking TOO much about the film is that I’m not sure it makes logical sense, at least not in our normal definition of left-brained, linear logic. The motivations of Death and Orpheus aren’t aways clear (much less so than the more realist Herteubise and Euridyce, which is actually probably intentional now that I think of it), nor is the process for moving between the two worlds. Yet it somehow manages to make mystical sense, if you don’t try to impose propositional logic onto it.

Reflective Response: I think I’m going to ditch the reflective responses. A few days isn’t enough time to process these films, so the experiment in comparing immediate to reflective responses was flawed in theory.

Picspam

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Haven’t done one of these in a LOOONG time. But I need to, because I actually got a bunch of very good music over Christmas, and I’ve been selfishly hoarding it.

Headlights – Some Racing, Some Stopping

First up, my favorite FFFFest find Headlights has just put out a new album in the past couple of weeks. Some Racing, Some Stopping has a lot of similarities to their former album Kill Them With Kindness, but a bit more…experimental (not quite the right word), while still being very indie-pop oriented. Both these tracks are off Some Racing, Some Stopping.

Headlights – Cherry Tulips
Headlights – Catch Them All

Kill Them With Kindness (2006)	Some Racing, Some Stopping (2008)
emusic	emusic
both albums on Amie Street
Amazon mp3	Amazon mp3
Amazon CD	Amazon CD

Broken Social Scene

I’ve known about Broken Social Scene peripherally for a while now, but mostly as “that other band that Emily Haines sings with (besides Metric) that I want to like but always end up skipping when it comes on my Slacker radio station because they’re kinda noisy.” Well, I got their self-titled CD at the library and figured out the problem: I usually listen to Slacker at night when I’m going to sleep, and Broken Social Scene isn’t sleeping music, it’s DRIVING music. Context is important.

Broken Social Scene is anchored by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, but also includes some fifteen or twenty musicians/singers who don’t all necessarily work on the same songs/albums. So Emily Haines sings two or three of the songs on this album (including1 “Swimmers” below), several of them are sung by Drew and/or Canning, and Feist even appears a time or two. Awesomeness. For a fuller list of BSS’s relations with other bands, see Wikipedia’s page. (Both of these tracks are from the album Broken Social Scene.)

Broken Social Scene – ibi dreams of pavement (a better day)
Broken Social Scene – Swimmers

Feel Good Lost (2001)	You Forgot It in People (2002)	Beehives (2004)	Broken Social Scene (2005)
emusic	emusic	emusic	emusic
Amazon mp3	Amazon mp3	Amazon mp3	Amazon mp3
Amazon CD	Amazon CD	Amazon CD	Amazon CD

This is quite possibly the best explanation and set of examples I’ve seen for why you should always watch the widescreen version of films rather than the pan-and-scan (or standard or fullscreen or whatever fancy names they use to sell it) mutilations. When I saw this on TCM the other day, I was frantic to figure out how to upload it to show it to people, and lo and behold someone on YouTube had already done so. Wonderful.