Orpheus (1950)
Directed by Jean Cocteau
A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.
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What critics compared Orpheus to
At best, Helena's wiggy adventures recall such Jean Cocteau films as "Orpheus" and "Blood of a Poet."
Jerry Zucker's 1990 fantasy combines elements of Spielbergian wistfulness a la Always (a dead man yearns to tell his beloved how much he loves her) and what appear to be very dim memories of Cocteau's Orpheus (a hunk walks through walls).
Researchers fall, evil keeps taking on new forms, and Carpenter has great fun setting up the scares in scenes that pay homage to Luis Buñuel’s “Un Chien Andalou,” Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, and other films that created a sense of the otherworldly on a limited budget.
Jean-Luc Godards 1965 conceptual masterpiece is a hardboiled, Pop Art, sci-fi gloss on Jean Cocteau s Orpheus and George Orwell s 1984, using bits and pieces of contemporary Paris to evoke a totalitarian future.
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That is what the hero of Cocteau’s “Orpheus” (1950) is told as he prepares to pass through a mirror into the underworld.
Whether it’s Jean Marais stepping through a mirror in Orpheus or George Lucas using miniatures to create a mile-long spaceship , practical effects, like a magician’s illusions, trick the eye into thinking it’s seeing something it isn’t.
In this stunt ending, Sciamma seems to have forgotten her previous invocation of Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, when Marianne and Héloïse ponder an artist’s choice between love and memory.
It’s as much of a fantasy as Jean Cocteau’s “ Orpheus ,” another great film about a poet that was at least partially set in the “real” contemporary world.
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Carruth portrays the couple's courtship in scenes so evocative they reach heights of cinematic lyricism rarely seen on film since Jean Cocteau's Orpheus (1950).