A view askew

ONLY in France could a film's hero be a superstar avant-garde poet who can't walk the streets without being mobbed by teenage girls screaming for autographs. It happens, without a glimmer of irony, in Jean Cocteau's Orphée.

While loitering with fellow bards at his regular watering hole, called, of course, the Café des Poètes, Orphée meets a mysterious dominatrix who gives him a pair of magic rubber gloves. They take him through the looking glass to a nocturnal underworld.

This 1950 version of the Orpheus legend is revived at the National Film Theatre as part of a tribute to Cocteau, dramatist, film director, drummer,

painter, opium addict, trainer of boxers and, naturellement, poet. (A new and comprehensive collection of essays is also published by Paul Holberton to accompany the event.)

Was Cocteau a Jean of all trades but a master of none? Orphée is unlikely to provide the answer.

Where one expects a delirious love story, Orphée (lumpily played by Jean Marais, Cocteau's muse and companion) is a moody narcissist who treats his long-suffering wife like a dog.

The film looks and sounds surprisingly old-fashioned for its era. And it takes itself unremittingly seriously. Yet there are flashes of weirdness and brilliance in it, and it paints a bracing portrait of a culture in which philosophy and poetry - for a brief while, at least - really counted.

Orphee
Cert: PG