Orpheus' Birthday
According to IMDB, and to the Kinopoisk, as well, on March 1, 1950, Jean Cocteau's film "Orphée (Orpheus)" premiered at the Cannes film festival. As for the date, no one has any objections to it. But as for the Cannes film festival... In 1950, the Cannes film festival simply was not held for a number of reasons.
The Cannes film festival was conceived in the 30s as a democratic alternative to the Venice film festival, which was permeated (at that time) with fascist ideology. Moreover, the organizers of the Cannes film festival even planned to hold it exactly in the same time frame as in Venice. That is, in the fall, usually in August - September. But before the war, it was not possible to hold a festival in Cannes.
And after the war, of course, many things changed. First of all, the need to create a democratic alternative to the Venice film festival disappeared. And the first Cannes film festival was held in 1946, not at the same time as the Venice film festival, but about a week later. In addition, post-war France did not have enough funds to hold an international film festival every year. Therefore, in 1948 and in 1950, the Cannes film festival was not held. And since 1951, the dates of the Cannes film festival were moved to the spring. However, this brief historical reference is given only to show that there was no film festival in Cannes in March 1950 and could not be. And the film "Orpheus", respectively, could not be presented at the Cannes film festival.
But at the Venice film festival in 1950, "Orpheus" was nominated for the main prize - the Golden Lion. But the jury of the festival, chaired by Mario Gromo, gave preference to another French film - "Justice est faite (Justice Is Done)".
A year later, "Orpheus" was nominated for a British BAFTA award in the category Best Film from any Source. And again, preference was given to another film. This time to the American movie masterpiece "All about Eve".
Reviews of film critics on the film were mostly laudatory. Although Bosley Crowther from The New York Times did not fail to add a spoonful of tar to the ointment of honey of enthusiastic reviews. In his review, Crowther quoted Cocteau himself who said "When I make a film, it is a slumber and I dream." And then Crowther, after a series of caustic and skeptical remarks about the film, concludes:
"Somnambulistic symbolism may be art for art's sake. Maybe not. This writer finds it slightly tiresome. It's more Morpheus than Orpheus by us." Although at the same time, Crowther pays tribute to the creators of the film, noting that the film "is produced with remarkable authority and photographed magnificently". - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, Nov. 30, 1950
But after half a century, another well-known American film critic, a real guru of American film critic, Roger Ebert rated Jean Cocteau's film with a maximum of 4 stars and included it on his list of Great Films. In a 2000 review, Ebert wrote:
"Seeing "Orpheus" today is like glimpsing a cinematic realm that has passed completely from the scene. Films are rarely made for purely artistic reasons, experiments are discouraged, and stars as big as Marais are not cast in eccentric remakes of Greek myths. The story in Cocteau's hands becomes unexpectedly complex; we see that it is not simply about love, death and jealousy, but also about how art can seduce the artist away from ordinary human concerns, so that after Orpheus astonishingly returns from the land of death, he is more concerned with the nonsensical radio transmissions than with his wife who loves him."
The well-known Russian film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev estimates the film “Orpheus” in approximately the same vein and rated the film to the maximum - 10 points out of 10 -
“in any frame of this old movie, there is much more inexplicable kinogeny and genuine poetry of the screen that is not subject to any markdown, which you will not find in a whole hundred new-fangled extravaganzas with fancy special effects even during the day. This is precisely the mystery of the cinematic gift, that even such a skilled master of words as Cocteau, even if he also had artistic talents, surprisingly feels the very essence of the film image, which seems to break through the literary layers and theatrical conventions, of course, more familiar to the author, and impresses with the power of its direct and immediate impact."
Regarding the evaluation of the Jean Cocteau's film by moviegoers, 68% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Based on the foregoing, the rating of the film "Orpheus" according to FilmGourmand is 8.166, which makes it rank 518th in the Golden Thousand.
