Introduced by Van Papadopoulos of The Institut Lumiere
The poet, playwright, artist, essayist and cinéaste Jean Cocteau made this film, his fifth and best, in his 60th year when he was a commanding figure in a European culture struggling to recover from the Second World War. The movie transposes the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, one of Cocteau’s favourite myths, to contemporary Paris where Orpheus (played by Cocteau’s favourite actor, Jean Marais) is a celebrated poet moving in fashionable intellectual circles, but like Cocteau subject to constant envy and sniping. Death (the raven-haired beauty Maria Casares) is driven in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce with motorcycle outriders, Hades is entered through mirrors, and its tribunal has echoes of clandestine Resistance meetings and post-war courts judging collaborators. A magical, enduring classic, to be seen again and again. - Philip French, The Observer
Van Papadopoulos recently created the French digital distribution company, Unzéro Films which focuses on the promotion and programming of recently restored, classic cinema. Van also collaborates on two film festivals (Cannes Classics, Festival Lumière) as a programmer and coordinator and spent ten years in New York working in independent film production. He has a BA in Comparative Literature and a dangerously fertile addiction to collecting film posters.
