"Through the Looking Glass: Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy Decanted"

The Orphic Trilogy by Jean Cocteau—The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950), and Testament of Orpheus (1960)—is not just cinema but a hallucinatory descent into the mirror-labyrinth of the soul. These films beg to be watched through the bottom of a red wine glass, where reality distorts into something richer, darker, more poetic. They’re soaked in myth, shimmering with avant-garde pretension, but it’s the kind of pretension you want to get lost in, like wandering into a party of surrealists and philosophers you barely understand but feel utterly enchanted by.

Take The Blood of a Poet, a film so abstract it practically dares you to scoff, but instead, you find yourself drawn into its fever dream of flying statues, snowball deaths, and corridors of voyeurism. It's less a narrative and more a séance, and by your second glass of Syrah, you’re no longer questioning its cryptic imagery. You’re just floating in it.

Then there’s Orpheus, perhaps the most intoxicating of the trilogy—a film that transforms the Orphic myth into a noirish meditation on art, obsession, and death. Cocteau’s black-and-white elegance pairs perfectly with a dark red Bordeaux, the kind of wine that tastes like the shadowy underworld he depicts. Every mirror becomes a portal; every word feels like a spell. It’s both maddeningly profound and whimsically absurd, leaving you wondering if Cocteau himself knew the answers or if he was just as seduced by his own riddles.

Finally, Testament of Orpheus is the ultimate indulgence—a meta-poem masquerading as a film. Here, Cocteau casts himself as the aging poet wandering through his own mythology, confronting past characters and symbols like a drunk philosopher trying to reconcile brilliance with mortality. This is when you switch to a Pinot Noir, light and melancholic, as the film wavers between playful self-awareness and cosmic yearning.

Sure, you could call these films overread pretension, the cinematic equivalent of quoting Rimbaud at a dive bar. But that’s missing the point. The Orphic Trilogy is not about understanding—it’s about surrendering. Like wine itself, these films intoxicate, disorient, and open portals in the mind. You don’t analyze Cocteau; you drink him in.