Hacker Cinema
Orpheus
Orphée
1950 · Film · 95 min
Part of The Orphic Trilogy
Directed by Jean Cocteau
A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.
2 positive1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 8½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Casablanca, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt, Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme, Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13 Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La Dolce Vita, La Jetée, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket, Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain, Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver, Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr, Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
I liked “Megalopolis” a lot, but admittedly I have a high tolerance for cult movies. (Well-engineered by-the-book storytelling feels increasingly boring. It’s a much greater pleasure to be constantly surprised and occasionally frustrated by an earnest attempt for cinematic poetry.)
I loved the “Jean Cocteau meets Showgirls” overall vibe. The madcap acting and superficial dialogue recalls silent movies and even Guy Maddin’s work. The visuals are like the world’s most expensive B-movie — in a good way.
It seems people have a hard time seeing movies as an artificial composition. Actors and their lines are referential elements within a work, not a reflection of reality.
Everybody understands this in theatre and opera, but somehow cinema audiences seem to have regressed in this regard. (I’m assuming viewers of Cocteau’s “Orpheus” didn’t complain that it’s not actually possible for a man to walk into a mirror. Yet that’s the kind of criticism we hear about elements in “Megalopolis.” The whole architecture thing is a metaphor, not an actual proposition for redesigning cities.)
I’m glad Coppola got to make his film, and I look forward to rewatching it in decades to come.
Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la bête), and Orpheus.
Try the version of Beauty and the Beast with the Phillip Glass soundtrack (basically turning the film into an opera).