The First and Final Film by Jean Cocteau Plays in Miami

Cocteau directed three films in 1930, 1950 and 1960 on the Orpheus myth. The Miami Beach Cinematheque will be projecting two of them this month, on April 2 and April 30, in a digital version with English subtitles.

The Blood of a Poet is the first film of the trilogy and the first feature film by Cocteau. A fantasy, dreamlike, experimental, surrealist, philosophical movie ... there are not enough adjectives in this language that can adequately define it. It is mainly the vision of a poet, a graphic film with multiple meanings … or none: only an attempt to make visible the invisible and the unconscious. "The privilege of cinema is that it allows a large number of people to dream the same dream together and also to show fantasies of unreality with the rigor of realism; in short, it is an admirable poetry vehicle", Cocteau says in Orpheus, the second part of this work.

Playing on April 2


In 1959, Cocteau ran out of funds for Testament of Orpheus, the third movie of the trilogy, and his final one. It is thanks to François Truffaut, that he was able to complete his film. « Since I am fortunate that The Four Hundred Blows are going well, I’ll turn over the benefits to your movie, said The Nouvelle Vague emblematic director. «   In this final film, Cocteau directed, according to his own words, a «   self-portrait », true to himself, a portrait of his invisible hand. "This movie is beautiful because it is the movie of a man who knows he is going to die and who fails to take death seriously, even if he wants."(Les Cahiers du Cinéma).

Playing on April 30

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