FILM | Jean Cocteau: The Orphic Trilogy | Orphée (Orpheus)

Jean Cocteau: The Orphic Trilogy
July 5–26
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) was a poet, filmmaker, artist, journalist, dramatist, and designer, as well as a celebrity and provocateur. He was a creative force at the center of the Parisian avant-garde from before World War I, through the surrealist 1920s and 30s, and beyond. His films exemplify the surrealist movement in France. They are dizzy with fantasy, mythology, melodrama, and unhinged experimentation. Nowhere is this more true than in his so-called Orphic Trilogy—three films inspired by the figure of Orpheus, the poet and musician of ancient mythology. For today’s viewer, the trilogy opens doors to Cocteau’s incomparable poetic consciousness.

Orphée (Orpheus)
Jean Cocteau, 1949, 95 min.
Saturdays, July 5 and 12, 2:30 p.m., July 26, 1 p.m.
Thursday, July 10, 7 p.m.
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.

Tickets are available at the museum (no surcharge) or through http://www.sfmoma.org/tickets (surcharge applies).

$5 general; free for SFMOMA members or with museum admission (requires a free ticket, which can be picked up in the Haas Atrium). Double features: films offered on the same date are included in one ticket.