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Jean Cocteau
: la regie de mort
Rev. Merle K. Peirce May 8, 2008
Cocteau Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) was brought up in a 19th Century Parisian family where the classics were appreciated, and became an important part of both his education, and his sensibilities. His view of art, and of the poet, especially as vates, or seer, was formed by classical Greek and Roman texts, and writers. As he became older, these also became important influences in his filmic experiments. There are, for instance, classical elements in Le Sang du Poète (1924) and La Beauté et le Bête (1946), although neither examines a purely classical Graeco-Roman theme. Cocteau became obsessed with the Orpheus myth, and to a much l esser, extent, that of Narcissus. Three of his six films are considered to constitute an Orpheus Trilogy. Yet, this is a combination of convenience rather than actuality, for while there are clear connections between Orphée and Le Testament d'Orphée, the relationship to Le Sang du Poète is much more
tenuous, and revolves, at least in part, around imagery of the mirror and theme of death. Death became an obsession for Cocteau. Initially devasted by the loss of his lover, Raymond Radeguet, and falling into an opium addiction in the months following it, he elevated the theme or character of death nearly to that of a lover. In his work, he combined the Ovidian concept of Orpheus and the escape from death with his own personal mythology, which in some measure seems derived from the ancient Orphic mystery religion. Such was his devotion to the myth, that he even named his sailing yachts Orphée. It was, perhaps, also a way of remembering a loved one lost. The poet's rôle, or ability, in seeing into the world of the dead became an important theme for Cocteau, forming the basis for his ballet Parade (1917) and the poem L'Ange Heurtebise (1925), as well as his films. During the 1920's Cocteau became part of a group of dramatists called the Neo-Helenists, because many of their plays dealt with classical themes. He did a stage adaptation of
Antigone in 1922, designed stage sets for a production of Debussy's Peleas et Mélisande in 1926, and produced two plays of his own, Orphée (1926) and The Infernal Machine (1934), based on the Oedipus story, and Bacchus a book of translations ( 1953). In the graphic arts, Cocteau often created distinctive line drawings of classical subjects, such as those that fill the manor home at Villa Santo Sospir. Part of the difficulty in dealing with Cocteau is that his work is split between a number of media, and the relationships, in part because of the fragmented nature of criticism and scholarship, are sometimes lost or obscured. Cocteau is often criticised as a poseur, but the reality is that his public persona is as much an art work as his poetry, painting or films. At the beginning of Orphée, Cocteau announces that "C’est le privilège des légendes d’être sans âge." Here he gives a veiled warning that, while the legend of Orpheus is itself timeless, it will also be reinterpreted and set
within a new time, the present. Indeed, the mechanisms of his plot turn on the great black black Rolls-Royce and the motorcycle escorts of la Princess, and these recur again in obvious reference in Godard's A bout de Soufle (1959). Orphée is a transplantation of Ovid's story into 1940's France. The relationship of Orpheus and Eurydice remains the same, and Cocteau builds and centres his story, not on this marital relation, but upon Orpheus' rôle as legendary poet. He was considered the greatest musician and poet of ancient Greece, trained by Apollo himself, whose singing charmed wild beasts and could impel trees to move. Ovid gives scant attention to Orpheus as poet, but adds a homoerotic gloss at the end of his retelling: ...he wandered on To Rhodope and Haemus, swept by the north winds, Where for three years, he lived without a woman Either because marriage had meant misfortune Or he had made a promise. But many women Wanted this poet for their own and many
Grieved over their rejection. His love was given To young boys only, and he told the Thracians That was the better way...
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To this basic plot, Cocteau adds an element of competition, in the form of another beautiful poet, Jacques Cégeste. In the film, both the poetic rôles are played by Cocteau's lovers, Jean Marais (Orphée) and Edouard Dhermitte (Cégeste). Yet, ostensibly, the loves are heterosexual. Orphee's physical lover is Eurydice, in Ovid a naiad, but in Cocteau a mortal. Both mortals fall in love with shades from the underworld. Eurydice with Heurtebise, a suicide, and Orphée with the Princess, who is death itself. The character Heurtebise is one of the most interesting in the film, eclipsing Orphée and Eurydice, and second only, possibly, to the Princess. Heurtebise has roots in Le Sange de Poète, but he actually appeared in Cocteau's poetic drama Orphée, written in 1927, some three years before the film was completed, and he is the central figure of Cocteau's poem
L'ange Heurtebise (published 1925), My guardian angel, Heurtebise, I guard you, I hit you, I break you, I change Your guard every hour. On guard, summer! I challenge You, if you're a man. Admit Your beauty, angel of white lead…
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Heurtebise was, for Cocteau, a reincarnation of his lover Raymond Radiguet (1903-1923), who died of typhus. Over time, Heurtebise underwent changes and became less like Radiguet. In Le Testament d'Orphée, we encounter a very handsome young carpenter/glazier wandering the underworld. This is a physical simulacrum of Radiguet who had been employed in the same trade. Part of Cocteau's charm is his ability to retrieve and retell the old myths in a new, fresh and endearing way. In Orphée, we love both the story of love that transcends the grave, and the unique, personal and surreal touches with which Cocteau garnishes the feast. He festoons
everything with garlands of homoerotic delight, he imparts a deeply personal feel to each of the characters, making them much more substantial than Ovid's. Further, from Le Sang du Poète, he brings the imagery of the mystic mirror and the fascination with death. Cocteau uses the magical image of the mirror as a doorway to the land of the dead to unite all three of the films of the trilogy. It is a unifying motif which links the films intimately, mystically and effectively. It is a theme of his personal mythology, dating back to Parade, but one which is very powerful, and which he uses to link and organise the films despite their disparate characters. In this example of surrealist film, which dates to 1930, but held back and suppressed by Cocteau's rich patron, the Vicomte de Noailles 3 for a time, Cocteau gave us in nascent form, several of the characters who people Orphée. We see the figure of the Princess in the woman card player, who claims the artist and then walks through a cavernous doorway
that resembles a tomb, we see the handsome artist who will become Cégeste, and the schoolboy and his guardian angel who will become Heurtebise. Interestingly, Cocteau calls the schoolboy the angel's prey. Finally, we have in the final moments of the film, the image of the poet or lyrist, the basis for Orphée himself. Le Testament d'Orphée presents us a quite different type of film. Made in 1959, only four years before his death, it is essentially a l'envoy, in the manner of Chaucer; it is his farewell message to us, wrapping up a few loose ends from Orphée, and bringing back some of the spectral quality of Le Sang du Poète. and elaborates the mystery of the poet, as Cocteau appears as the time traveller. The time traveller seems yet another iteration of the poet as seer, linking past and future with the present. Cocteau utilised classical themes in a manner very different to earlier, and later, film makers. The earliest Italian directors often chose Victorian recreations (Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz, 1895; Last Days of Pompeii by Sir Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, 1834) of Roman life, for the bases of the super spectaculars such as Quo Vadis (Enrico Guazzoni, 1912) or Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii (Luigi Maggi, 1908 and Mario Caserini, 1913), Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914), and favoured recreations in the epic tradition. Americans such as Cecil B. DeMille (King of Kings,1927) and Fred Niblo (Ben Hur, 1925) created films with Biblical content and a thin overlay of Roman culture which provided large titillating doses of degeneracy and moral torpor with an equal portion of old time religion. Carmine Gallone's resurgent Fascist Scipio Africanus (1937) is simply a bloodier, more extreme precursor of the spate of sword and sandal epics (peplum) which followed the completion of Orphée in 1949. Classical themes have traditionally been a licence to explore themes of power, male sexuality and dominance. Films such as Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960), Jason and the Argonauts (Nick Willing, 1963) and the incredible series of Italian Hercules films starring male body builders produced during 1957-1964, all typify this
approach to classicism and male portrayals. In point of fact, the only thing which these films have in common with Cocteau is the celebration of the male physical body. Male beauty transfuses the entirety of the trilogy, from Enrique Rivero as the poet and Feral Benga as the black Angel in Le Sang du Poète, to Jean Marais and Edouard Dhermitte in Orphée and Guy Dute, Philippe Juzan, Daniel Moosman and Jean Claude Petit who play the Man-Horses and "funny looking dog" in Le Testament d'Orphée, a well as figures of more mature masculine beauty, such as the motor cycle police and Francois Périer, who plays Heurtebise. As the Cocteau's editor says in Orphée "Etonnez-nous!" Cocteau re-establishes the classical motif in his own remarkable, and astonishing, way. He deliberately eschews the militaristic epic and theogony, and selects Ovid's relatively obscure tale of the poet Orpheus, which allows him to explore both the rôle and nature of the poet, and death and her desmesnes. He returns to the form of the fairy tale which he
exploited so successfully in La Beauté et le Bête. In Cocteau's films, death is created both beautiful and elegant. In personalising her as feminine, in giving her very human qualities, he establishes a remakable and revolutionary new view of death, one which does not cause fear. While Cocteau sets his own agenda and approach to death, it also seems that he also echoes Ovid's own apologia: Now I have done my work. It will endure I trust beyond Jove's anger, fire and sword, Beyond time's hunger. the day will come, I know, So let it come, that day which has no power Save over my body, to end my span of life Whatever it may be. Still, part of me, The better part, is immortal, will be borne Above the stars; my name will be remembered Wherever Roman power rules conquered lands, I shall be read, and through all centuries, If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,
I shall be living, always.
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And here, in Ovid, is the source of Cocteau's interest in death and the status of the poet. For each, the poet, through his work, transcends death and lives on. It is a unifying theme for both ancient and modern artists, and one which entranced Cocteau throughout his life. Cocteau echoed these Ovidian sentiments, more succinctly perhaps, in the inscription he chose for his tomb: "I remain with you."
End Notes 1
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3
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Ovid, Metamorphoses trans. Horace Gregory, (New York: New American Library, 1960), 236. Jean Cocteau. L'ange Heutebise, tr. Charles Guenther. Old Poetry. 29 April 2006. Metamorphoses, 392. Blood of the Poet. Jean Cocteau Website. 29 April 2006.
Works Cited Anon. Blood of the Poet. Jean Cocteau Website. 29 April 2006. Beylie, Claude, ed. Larousse, 2000.
Une histoire du cinema francais. Paris:
Cocteau, Jean. L'ange Heutebise, tr. Charles Guenther. Old Poetry. 29 April 2006. Le Sang du Poète. Dir. Jean Cocteau. Vicomte de Noailles, 1929. Le Testament d'Orphée. Dir. Jean Cocteau. Cenedis, 1959. Orphée. Dir. Jean Cocteau. Films du Palais Royal, 1949. Ovid. Metamorphoses trans. Horace Gregory. New York: New American Library, 1960.
Villa Santo Sospir. Dir. Jean Cocteau. Films du Cap, 1952. Cook, David. A History of Narrative Film. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. Morford, Mark P. O. and Lenardon, Robert J. Classical Mythology. New York: Longman, 1977. Naso, Publius Ovidius Ovid: Metamorphoses. tr. Rolfe Humphries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988? Steegmuller, Francis. Cocteau - A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970.
