In 1954, Jean Cocto, then president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, fought hard to get Leni Riefenstahl's film Lowlands to be selected, writing to her: "The film industry of this century cannot do without you. ”
Leni Riefenstahl became the aesthetic interpreter of Nazi Party politics because of Hitler's appreciation, and was commissioned by Hitler to shoot documentaries for the Nazi Party such as "Victory of the Will" and "Olympia", which made her a controversial female director in film history. After the war, she was forbidden to publish her work in public.
Riefenstahl and Hitler
In his memoirs, Riefenstahl wrote, "(Cocto) This admiration left me completely overwhelmed, in stark contrast to the slander I had to endure over the years. Eventually, due to the rejection of the German Interior Ministry, "Lowlands" was only screened in Cannes as a non-competition film. In this incident, Cocteau, an artist who had been ridiculed, ridiculed and eventually expelled by surrealist circles, showed a pure concern for art and gave Riefenstahl, a post-war female director who was degraded, with recognition and encouragement.
In 1963, at the age of 74, Cocteau died suddenly, a true artist who was favored by God, a poet, a writer, a painter, a dramatist, and a filmmaker, when he heard the news of the death of his singer's friend Edith Piaf, he was sad and intoxicated, causing a heart attack and disappearing with his friend.
Jean Cocteau & Edith Piaf
Half a century later, the 2013 Cannes Film Festival commemorated the 50th anniversary of Cocto's death, with a special tribute session to re-screen Cocteau's classic masterpieces, which were shortlisted for the 1946 Cannes Film Festival's "Beauty and the Beast", and screened Arielle Dombasle's musical "Opium", recreating Coctor and the poet and writer Raymond Radiguet) was deeply emotionally homosexual in the early 20s of the last century.
<h1>A gifted poet</h1>
Cocteau said: "Everything I had came from childhood. ”
Born in Paris in 1889 to a wealthy and artistic family, Cocteau spent the most perfect childhood of his life as a Cancerian.
His father was a highly gifted amateur painter; his mother was proficient in piano, dressed in noble and charming costumes, and lingered in social places; his maternal grandfather was an amateur chamber musician and art collector, often organizing concerts. The background music for this family is usually Wagner's work.
The pampered growing environment, the ubiquitous artistic atmosphere, so that the young Cocteau has enough time to indulge in the wonderland of literature, as a primary school student, he and from different classes of theater, song and dance people hot, he ran all over the paris theater, he was also one of the first audience of the Lumiere brothers.
There is no doubt that art became a way of daily life for Cocteau, soaking into every cell of him like blood.
At the age of 19, Cocteau published his first collection of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, and throughout his life he called himself a poet, incorporating his poetic expression into his films, paintings, and plays, and practicing the poet's talent for dialogue with another world.
His most outstanding film masterpiece, "Orpheus Trilogy", "The Blood of the Poet", "Orpheus", "Orpheus's Testament", through the eyes and identity of the poet/artist, with a self-obsessed and simultaneous reflexive contemplative tone, with a poetic fragmented chanting method, repeatedly interprets his thinking and reflection on the relationship between creation and the creator, the insight into death and rebirth, the fascination with the mirror world, the desire for love and the generosity of eternal love.
The poet's cunning imagination makes Cocteau an omnipotent magician in the world of cinema. The cinematic techniques he inherited from early filmmakers such as Mélières are transformed into Cocteau-esque dreams and magical moments, full of stunning poetry.
Stills from Orpheus's Will
In an age without special effects, through simple replay techniques, in Orpheus's Testament he created Sergest to be resurrected from the water, and the flower of death was reborn in elegant silence.
Similarly, for the display of crossing the mirror, in his debut film "The Poet's Blood", he used the simulation and editing of the pool to achieve it, and in "Orpheus", he presented a magical moment through the mirror world arranged by the double.
Coctor once mentioned in the documentary "Jean Coctor: Portrait of an Unknown Artist" that the extraordinary ability of film to visualize mirror images is why he loves film.
The mirror in Orpheus
In the field of French avant-garde art in the 20th century, there is almost no art category that can bypass Cocteau. As Picasso's close friend, his paintings clearly bear the shadow of Bisso. His plays "Terrible Parents" and so on have survived to this day. He collaborated with the Ballet Russau on the avant-garde ballet Parade and choreographed a concert for the Composers Of Six, even though he really couldn't dance or arrange music. His paintings, graffiti and decorations of Villa Santo Sosby are still frequently visited today.
Picasso in Orpheus's Testament
In Orpheus's Testament, Cocteau, who is over 70 years old, gracefully walks through the works of his life, walking through the stage of the theatrical scenes he has created, talking to the characters in his films, and showing the lines of his paintings. He used his collection of works of art to put an end to his artistic path, a farewell that was so apt one.
<h1>Self-love yo sosa</h1>
Narcissists are sharp. Narcissistic artists often have a sensitive disposition and sharp insight. That's the case with Cocteau. He famously said, "I am frank, never arrogant, and the only thing I want is love." ”
James S. Williams commented in his biography Jean Cocteau: "Coctor has a narcissistic desire to be all men himself, to be able to go anywhere, to dominate all stages, because aesthetic beauty seems to be able to give him the meaning of 'existence'." But once the play is over/performed and the dream is awakened, the desire to 'become the most sensitive soul in the world' immediately turns into a terrible sense of loneliness. ”
By James S. Williams
Translator: Liu Yuqing
Publisher: Peking University Publishing Co., Ltd.
Cocteau's own feelings are: "Being in a crowd but feeling lonely and painful, being in a beloved place but feeling out of place melancholy, being unskilled (not being able to combine the roles of all people) is disgusting, living like a prisoner in a small self-space is disgusting..."
However, I have to admit that this entangled narcissism, and the loneliness that accompanies it, are the catalysts for his elegant demeanor, deep thoughts, and colorful inspiration.
There is no doubt that Cocteau's narcissism and his loneliness are closely related to the circumstances in which he grew up and his relationship with his mother. Cocto grew up obsessed with his mother's elaborate grooming moments, shining jewelry, exquisite makeup, all of which have since appeared in his films. Knowing this, you will no longer be surprised why Cocteau's visual world is always so beautiful and sparkling. Everyone who has seen "Beauty and the Beast" will definitely be blinded by that costume.
He inherited his mother's social charm, which allowed him to travel among people, so he never lacked money in his creations. His directorial debut, Blood of the Poet, was a pastime funded by the nobility, and he even offered 17 million francs for Jean-Pierre Melville to direct his screenwriting work Terrible Children.
The narcissistic complex is also inextricably linked to its homosexual identity. His acquaintance with the "jewel of poetry" Raymond Hadigue was Cocteau's brightest time, and the early death of the genius he called the favorite of his life left him with the aid of opium to anesthetize his hollowed-out body.
Later, in his monumental series Orpheus Trilogy, he carved his narcissism and fascination with masculine beauty into images. Cocto's royal male protagonist Jean Marais was promoted by Coctor for his beauty, and became famous in "Terrible Parents", and after starring in "Orpheus", Cocto fulfilled his dream of stardom with "Beauty and the Beast".
In the end, Cocteau himself stepped onto the big screen, and in "Orpheus's Testament", he used the elegant and lonely back to cross the glory and withering of the poet's narcissistic life.
Jean Cocteau & Raymond Radiguet
However, throughout his life, Hadiguet will always be Cocteau's love and pain. Despite the miracles of countless experiments in the film, reality is ultimately yin and yang. The Oedipus (Oedipus) complex was also like a spell, trapping Cocteau at his mother's side until he was forty years old.
<h1>Death and Will</h1>
When Cocteau was 9 years old, his father shot himself in his bed at home, and his flawless dreamy childhood came to an abrupt end. Years later, in an interview, Cocteau "tacitly admitted that his father may have been a non-public homosexual," and that his suicide may have been due to an inability to accept this fact in his heart. At the age of 34, Cocteau experienced the early death of his lifelong love Raymond Hadiguet, the death of the genius teenager who had inspired him so much, which took him a long time to heal.
The death of his father and beloved profoundly influenced Cocteau's subsequent creations, and death and rebirth became the motifs he repeatedly described throughout his life. In his films, the mirror connects the world of reality and the underworld, and the poet wanders between two worlds, easily resurrecting the flower of death and recreating the vanished frame.
Throughout his life, the word death represents the real emotional pain that Cocteau experienced, and it also means an artist's essential experience of creative inspiration, like the anxiety and despair felt by the great poet in Orpheus whose sentences dried up. Rebirth is his way of seeking eternal life in the world of image/creation, and only in this most free country can he do whatever he wants.
On October 11, 1963, Cocteau, who was painting murals in a chapel, suddenly learned that the chanson singer Edith Piaf had died. The singer who sings "Life of a Rose" has a tragic life, she has experienced the death of her children, has been involved in murder cases, and for the rest of her life she has been addicted to drugs and alcohol. Despite this, Cocteau regarded him as a lifelong confidant, so after hearing the bad news, he had a heart attack. Then, when Cocteau said, "Today is my last day on earth," he couldn't wake up.
Death was sudden for Cocteau, but this last words were like an oracle once again proved the poet/director's innate inspiration. In fact, he was already ready, just as at the end of Orpheus's Testament, he disappeared into this earth that did not belong to him, and went to seek eternal freedom in death.
<h1>Jean Coctor's Orpheus Trilogy</h1>
The Poet's Blood (1930)
Director: Jean Cocteau
Screenwriter: Jean Cocteau
Duration: 50 minutes
The short film is Cocteau's directorial debut and the first of his Orpheus Trilogy. Imbued with the avant-garde and experimental nature of early cinema, the film opens up Cocteau's journey of exploring art, creation, death, rebirth, reality, dreams, and love in a surrealist way through images. In this film we can already see his usual approach and style since then, the Mélièsque cinematic magic blended into the non-narrative poetic narrative to create an amazing, psychedelic and eerie image space. For this reason, this film is known as one of the representative works of the French Surrealist movement.
Orpheus (1950)
Starring: Jean Marais
Duration: 95 minutes
The film applies and deconstructs the story of the classic ancient Greek myth "Orpheus and Eurydice". The great poet Orpheus, whose creative inspiration withered, traveled through the world and the underworld, and the medium between them was the "mirror" that appeared repeatedly in Cocteau's films. The "mirror" for Kocteau is not only a reflection on himself (narcissism and reflection as an artist), but also a mysterious passage to the opposite of life, death (thus exploring the essential meaning of life). The bidirectional nature of this passage gives Cocteau's images the wonders of rebirth. The film is the most narrative chapter in the trilogy, in which many scenes enter the mirror world are more skillful than "Poet's Blood", presenting fascinating magical moments with magical and ingenious techniques.
Orpheus's Will (1960)
Director: Jean Cocteau
Screenwriter: Jean Cocteau
Starring: Jean Coctor
Duration: 80 minutes
Cocteau personally led the audience through his screen, making the film a true "will" of the author. The film is a retrospective display of all of Cocteau's artistic creations, poetry, paintings, plays, films... It is also Cocteau's summative reflection on artistic creation. The poet he plays is constantly encountering death and rebirth through the mysterious time tunnel. The film is full of self-deprecating fragments, as well as a wonderful moment when a simple upside down hand decrees the rebirth of the flower. Cocteau is still the one who is obsessed with death and rebirth, fantasy and surreality, but this time he accepts the arrival of death calmly in order to seek eternal freedom.