Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Ever since I first saw Orphee decades ago I thought it one of world cinema's Greats, a work of Art and underplayed panache that literally transcends Time. That was Part 2 of Jean Cocteau's Orpheus cycle in 1949 – in 1932 Part 1 Le Sang D'un Poete set the scene in a whimsical primitive way, and Testament was the convoluted Part 3 which became his final film released in 1960. First thing – if you enjoyed Orphee I recommend not watching this immediately afterwards, it's a contrast between gold and brass. Second thing - if you don't like pretentious art films this is a special case, it's still by far the best pretentious film I've ever seen and worth watching for its self-confidence. If you do like pretentious art films then to come clean I'm one of the denser people so disparaged by the previous exalted commenter therefore I have nothing I can impart to you. I've always considered this only as Cocteau's Testament – it's all about him and his thoughts of posterity at 70.Cocteau as film maker and poet stands between two worlds accused of being guilty of Innocence and is condemned to Life while his last film makes itself around him. There's a lot more to it, involving going backwards forwards and sideways in Time and Timelessness with or without trick photography, all of the cast large or small spouting cod-heavy aphorisms with gossamer realism or relevance. It gave him a chance to revisit the subject, and as he admitted at the end of the film to give some of his old friends (Casares, Perier, Dermithe etc) a job in the revisiting – after all, he was by now to use his own words from Orphee now "rotten with success" and could get away with murder. He died twice in here – even the Motorcyclists Of Death only wanted his autograph - and he lived and died to tell the tale. I can see where Banksy got his inspiration for his recent Mobile Phone Lovers from. I take away the image of Cegeste's image being saved from backward burning only for the image to be torn to pieces, that cerebral scene was worth the eighty minutes! The twenty minute wordy trial scene gets tiresome as you gradually realise its pointlessness apart from the padding out of the temporal running time. But there's plenty of tremendous imagery and heavy moralising throughout; Cocteau was incredibly talented, big on surrealism the occult and symbolism of all kinds, all more or less intellectual dead ends and as with many other big thinkers full of mumbo jumbo before and since he agonised over the merits and demerits of the Catholic Church, another dead end. Whereas with Orphee he made a film that could be enjoyed over the generations by all kinds of people with various levels of brainpower he created here a film so obscure it only plays like an in-joke raspberry to the world of the end of his life.So there you are – I do quite like Le Testament D'Orphee so hopefully Cocteau won't be sad wherever he is, it's just I'm not a poet and have an old nose for Art and Artifice. No matter how unique or interesting this film is to me or even for that matter to those of a higher intellect, he was simply having a laugh.

Le Testament d'Orphée is an uneven work compared to the more achieved and better realized Orphée (to which it is very tightly related of course) and for this reason, may not appeal to everyone, even those who were enchanted by Cocteau's visual poetry in Orphée. There are of course a good number of puzzling scenes, but they remain quite tame compared to Le Sang d'un Poète, a much more hermetic and typically surrealistic film (a la Bunuel), and Cocteau's approach, far from being that of some elitist intellectual, is in fact caring for his audience. The imagery presented to us in Le Testament is often introduced by Cocteau's off voice and very often also, by himself on screen. I always felt welcome to his world, comfortable in his poetic universe, because he truly seems preoccupied by how we react to what is shown to us. The numerous scenes with the Hibiscus flower are at the heart of how the various components of Cocteau's clockwork interact for the benefit of his spectators. We marvel at simple things now: Cocteau debunks the symbolism of the second part of the Trilogy: we're reminded that Cégeste and Heurtebise are the fruits of an early poem by Cocteau. We are reunited with the Princess (Maria Casares) and Heurtebise (François Périer) at a tribunal where everything and everyone now seems to be less threatening, where everyone is taking oneself less seriously than in Orphée. Le Testament is truly a work of love, of true affection from Cocteau to everyone of us.There is nothing pretentious here, and only a few philistines may remain impervious to Cocteau in the same way as they likely are to poetry in general. Poets are the least well understood workers in our society, and for the densest among us, they are probably completely useless parasites living out of public charity. But if Cocteau's message is to be of any significance today to his fellow humans, 50 years after his death, it is that poetry does not need to be some hermetic language published in expensive editions for a happy few enlightened elite cut from the rest of society. One of Cocteau's pioneering contributions is his use of the "cinématographe" – as he liked to refer to it – as a tool for a poet to convey the mechanics of his mind to something tangible. He often said (e.g. watch the fascinating documentary Jean Cocteau: Autoportrait d'un inconnu (1985) on the Criterion edition of Le Sang d'un Poète, a must-see to truly understand Cocteau's cinema) that the poet does not control what he thinks, what he imagines, etc.: he is merely a conduit between some immaterial but powerful source (call it God, the gods or whatever) and his fellow mortals. Cocteau was the first recognized published poet to use cinema successfully and creatively to express poetry from the privileged and original point of view of a poet. His most achieved work in this respect was La Belle et la Bête, but the Orphée "trilogy" is a close contender for that matter. Furthermore, unlike other surrealists and fellow artists of his era (such a brilliant one, with so many luminaries from times the likes of which we will never see again – ours is a whole different universe) whose output was mainly through painting and literature exclusively, Cocteau's poetic films are not only still among us, but through the contribution of scholars or simply cinema lovers, still resonate to this day and enjoy a second or third life thanks to the democratizing effect of digital technology. And this is where his effect and influence on us is at its most vivid and significant.One can rightly argue that Cocteau's cinematographic book of tricks gets rapidly limited as we watch his films, and that his gimmickry may appear a little bit naive, especially to 21st-century eyes. However, one must be reminded that what we witness by viewing his films is the vision of a poet, and this is where the viewer must try to put him (her)self, i.e. to discard our unforgiving, CGI-saturated view of film images, and concentrate on the symbolism of Cocteau's universe.This is why one should not watch the Testament d'Orphée before the better rounded up works, especially La Belle et la Bête, which is a true masterpiece. And as with all masterpieces, everything else, including one artist's other works, pales in comparison. But at least, Cocteau's language becomes better articulated and more understandable once we have been exposed to the most seamless of his poems.

This kind of movie is very difficult to rate. It can't compete with any IMDb's top 250 movies. No Godfather, no Dark Vador, no Indiana Jones. Not a feelgood movie, not a buddy movie... not any f... blockbuster movie. Well. Let's face it : not anybody's movie. It's just a f... masterpiece about Poetry. That's why it's not ranked, but still pretty well rated for such an old movie. Films like this don't exist anymore. Maybe poets like this don't exist anymore. Maybe Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast is easier, and a better choice to start with Cocteau's Film works, but I think this one is mesmerizing. Also, Cocteau's "Le Sang d'un Poete" from 1930 is maybe a great movie for surrealist films fans. But Le Testament dOrphee is Cocteau's last effort and for me it sums up and benefits all. A testament and a masterpiece.

The third film in the so-called Orphic Trilogy of Jean Cocteau, Testament Of Orpheus (Le Testament D'Orphée, Ou Ne Me Demandez Pas Pourquoi!), is also the third film in The Criterion Collection release boxed set, and while it's the best of the trio it's nowhere near a good film. It does have perhaps the best scoring, and a dozen or so moments in its eighty minutes that have some spark of creativity, but Cocteau is so narcissistic and the film so self-indulgent and replete with outdated special effects, such as Cocteau running film in reverse on numerous occasions, that one feels almost embarrassed for him. Also, the previous two entries in the trilogy set the bar so low that Cocteau did not really have to do much to improve upon their failures, and he didn't do much.Despite his claims to the contrary, Cocteau was certainly no poet of any stature, and his lack of writing skill can be seen in this undeniably dreadful screenplay, loaded with the most clichéd claims about poetry and art, and the most banal and absurd imagery imaginable- even as Cocteau believes it is deep. Part of the odd charm of the film, and its predecessors, is that Cocteau really does believe the crap he spews. At one point in the film he even states, 'It is the unique power of the cinema to allow a great many people to dream the same dream together and to present illusion to us as if it were strict reality. It is, in short, an admirable vehicle for poetry.' Not only is the sentiment false and highfalutin', but it's read by Cocteau with such earnest inanity that one wonders whether he really could believe such tripe and not have to restrain a guffaw.Testament Of Orpheus is the least embarrassing of the so-called Orphic Trilogy, but it still does not rise above the sci fi schlock of the 1950s, films which often had bold premises, but failed merely in technical and acting aspects. This film is not even bold. It's puerile and trite, and Cocteau is an embarrassment to all real poets. The cinematography by Roland Pontoizeau is often framed poorly, and the music by Georges Auric is woefully inappropriate in many places. Had Cocteau actually been a real artist, this film, and perhaps the whole trilogy and his canon, may have been intriguing glimpses into meta-film, decades before the twin banes of Abstract Expressionism and Postmodernism dulled contemporary painting and literature. Even the often repetitive Charlie Kaufman scripted films of recent years are leagues ahead of this garbage, in terms of narrative twists, depth, and real characterization. Instead, Cocteau was a jack of all arts, and a master of none, a narcissistic unwitting walking cliché in the flesh. I tire of apologists for this sort of manifestly bad art who always try to claim that a work of art that is so terrible is simply 'too deep', or any other such nonsense, to be properly critiqued. While truly great art has often been dismissed in this manner by bad critics, Testament Of Orpheus is not only not great art, but manifestly bad art. Its premises and claims are easily seen through, for they are so shallow, and that is what kills it as a film. One can only wonder what part they had in Cocteau's demise. One can dream, can't one?