the other side of the self
by Douglas Messerli
Jean Cocteau (writer and director) Orphée (Orpheus) 1950
“Every schoolchild knows the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice,” begins Jean Cocteau’s film, repeating the ancient myth
before rolling off into its own hardly recognizable version. For Cocteau, it
appears, is far less interested in the love between the original couple than he
is in Orpheus himself. Indeed, the director is portrayed as Orpheus (as Cocteau
wrote during the film’s making, “It is much less a film than it is myself.”), a
highly successful poet who, we discover in the first scene, is scorned by his
own poetry community. All the general criticisms of Cocteau—that his writing
was basically unoriginal, that he stole from numerous other writers, and that
his works were lacking real experimentalism—are called up in Orpheus’
discussion with an older poet, before the young rival, Cégeste, appears on the
scene, calling up Cocteau’s own affair with the young poet Raymond Radiguet,
whose death decades before, as Mark Polizzotti writes in the notes to the
Criterion edition, “still haunted him.” The fact that Orpheus was performed by
Cocteau’s former long-time lover, the handsome matinee idol Jean Marais, and Cégeste
was acted by Cocteau’s current bedmate, Edouard Dermithe, further creates
tensions between the artist in the
film and the creator of the work of
art.
If I were to recount the plot of the rest of this film, for those who have
never seen it, I might be perceived as ridiculous and possibly not to be
believed, so I’ll forego the storytelling. It hardly matters, in any event, for
as those who have watched this “incredible” piece of cinema, the landscape is a
mix of a dream world and the personal that hardly ever comes up for breath into
solid ground. In Cocteau’s telling the somewhat plain but pleasant Marie Déa is
less a lover than she is a slightly pampered, mostly ignored wife. For Orpheus’
true love is on the other side of the mirror, where death waits, performed
brilliantly in Cocteau’s fable by great dramatic actress, María Casares. As the
dead chauffeur, Heutebise (François Périer), tells Orpheus:
I am letting you into the secret of all secrets, mirrors
are gates through which death comes and goes. Moreover
if you see your whole life in a mirror you will see death
at work as you see bees behind the glass in a hive.
From the very moment he encounters the Princess of Death, observing her
and the now dead Cégeste passing through a mirror, the poet cannot help but
attempt the same action, frustrated by the hard surface of the glass, but
equally fascinated by whom he encounters there. For Cocteau, it is quite clear,
the Orpheus myth also involves the story of Narcissus, as Marais in a grand
theatrical manner, plays to himself, enjoying the image of his own pompadour-topped
beauty. If he thinks he has fallen in
love with Death, it is also clear that it is not the black-clad ice-cold beauty
whom he attempts to follow throughout the film, but the other side of himself.
If that weren’t enough, Cocteau creates a strange bond between the dead
chauffeur, Heurtebise, and Orpheus, who brings both the car and the driver into
his house. Heurtebise, in turn, falls in love with the now neglected Eurydice,
and it is his love for her, not Orpheus’, that sends the poet into the land of
the dead to retrieve her.
Even here, moreover, Cocteau creates another kind of homoerotic bond, as
Heurtebise takes Orpheus’ hand and shoulder, leading him through the Zone into
death’s realm. In short, Orpheus is in love with himself, first, with Death,
and, indirectly with Cégeste and even Heurtebise, as opposed to Eurydice. Is it
any wonder that, in order for her to return to life, the husband is commanded
not to set eyes upon her again—a problem which further frustrates and
infuriates him. Both Orpheus and Eurydice are trapped through the command to live
with one another without the ability to express love or hate (you can neither
love nor argue with someone you cannot see), and both, at moments, become determined
to break the rules, destroying each other in the process. Orpheus’ look into
the car mirror to glimpse his wife seems almost like a determined attempt to
rid himself of her—allowing him, since it will also mean his own death, to be
enveloped in the arms of the Princess.
Indeed, as in the original myth, the angered mob of young poets and
determined “Bacchantes,” feminist writers in Cocteau’s witty telling, kill him,
and, once more, with Heurtebise (the Charon of this tale) he is transported into
death’s realm, Death, in her impatience waiting for him to arrive, momentarily experiencing
human time.
The strange twist at the end of this tale is more explicable if we
comprehend that all three of his lovers—The Princess, Heurtebise, and
Cégeste—perhaps perceiving that each is secondary to Orpheus’ central love,
himself, erase him from their thinking, allowing him to go back in time, and to
return to his loving Eurydice, as if she has just awakened from a nightmare
nap.
If we find Orpheus’ sudden caring for and embracement of his previously
neglected wife, a bit unbelievable, we must nonetheless recognize that through
death—and by extension through immersion in the self—the artist is redeemed so
that he might, through his creation, continue to survive in the everyday world
of “baby clothes and bills,” at which Orpheus had earlier chaffed. So has the
self-pitying poet surprisingly (he has been told by the older poet to “surprise
them”) discovered another concept of “the other side of the self,” a self that
lives in the mundane world of everyday being.
Los
Angeles, August 4, 2013
Great review!
ReplyDeleteWe're linking to your article for Jean Cocteau Friday at SeminalCinemaOutfit.com
Keep up the good work!