How do you comment adequately on a film that has been so influential that not only is it referenced CONSTANTLY by everyone from modern film-makers (seen Schrader's "The Comfort of Strangers"?) to The Smiths to The Pet Shop Boys in "DJ Culture"? It's probably Cocteau's stand-out film.There is the trademark great design, lighting and cinematography, but here the "softness" of the visual imagination is countered with a very strong, harsh undercurrent: the motorcycle-riding harbingers of death, the sinister, authoritative voice over the radio, and (above all) the magnetic allure of Maria Casares as The Princess/Death. The allusion to the Nazi occupation and the communication between the Allies and the Resistance is well-covered elsewhere, and it certainly adds another "veil over the mirror", but this stands the test of time as an independently viewed re-telling of the great myth, told by a master.
Review of Orpheus
