Studiocanal will release brand new 4K restorations of Jean Cocteau‘s influential classics, The Blood of a Poet (Le sang d’un poète) and The Testament of Orpheus (Le testament d’Orphée), on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download on 5 August 2019 as part of Studiocanal’s Vintage World Cinema Collection.
Made thirty years apart, these two films bookend Cocteau’s filmic career and are both considered masterpieces of the avant-garde movement.
Made in 1932, the first part of the ‘Orphic’ trilogy LE SANG D’UN POÊTE, seeks to explore the feelings within a poet’s heart and soul, beginning in an artist’s studio where an unfinished statue comes to life. The lips of its androgynous face move, pressing a kiss to the artist’s hand. At the statues demand, he plunges it into a mirror.
In his last film LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE (1960), Cocteau created a truly abstract piece of work as his swansong. He himself portrays an 18th century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious, possibly post-apocalyptic wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic and surreal encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. With an eclectic cast that includes cameos from Pablo Picasso, Jean Marais, Brigitte Bardot, Charles Aznavour, Roger Vadim and Yul Brenner, LE TESTAMENT D’ORPHÉE brings full circle the journey Cocteau began in LE SANG D’UN POÊTE – an exploration of the tortuous relationship between the artist and his creations.
Special Features:
The Blood of a Poet:
Jean Cocteau: Hallucinogenic Poetics featuring interviews with Claude Arnaud, biographer of Cocteau and Dominique Marny, Cocteau’s great niece and director of the Comité Jean Cocteau
Testament of Orpheus
Jean Cocteau: The Last Pharaoh featuring interviews with Claude Arnaud, biographer of Cocteau and Dominique Marny, Cocteau’s great niece and director of the Comité Jean Cocteau
