So the film Orpheus seemed to be a little more difficult to get into than the other movies we have watched in class, I would just have to blame that on the storyline because did not completely understand what was happening at the time I was watching it. I guess it my trouble with the film was that I thought it was going to resemble the Greek mythology pretty much as closely as possible, but it really didn't follow it exactly. Also it was in french so there were times that I would fall in and out of attention if I couldn't comprehend what they were saying.
What I did notice and found interesting was the whole aspect of the poet, and how Orpheus is able to travel into this underworld because he is has this certain gift. Now my big question while I was watching this film was that are poets universally looked at to having this power? The reason I ask this is because this story reminded me a lot of Dante's Inferno, which is a story of a man who is led through the nine circles of hell to find a beautiful woman named Beatrice who resides in purgatory. Now in this story we see a man who is also trying to find his "love" and has to cross deep into the depths of the underworld so that he may find her. The interesting thing about this story is that Dante is led through the nine circles of hell by a poet named Virgil. This was the point where I was like why do poets get these special powers to descend between worlds, and is it any poet who is allowed these powers?
In class we touched on why this power to travel into the underworld is possible by poets,and we found out that they have a certain closeness to death throughout having a "career" of being a poet, which is a really cool concept and fits both of these stories. One would have to wonder though if there were other positions one could take to also be granted these powers such as being an artist in general, or a certain type of musician, maybe they can go into other worlds, I don't know. I do know now that Greek mythology and catholic belief kind of have this same conceptual idea of poets having this power, by looking at Dante's Inferno and Orpheus.
Visually this movie was freaking amazing, the whole underworld being made of post world war two ruins just added to there being two different realms. I'm just a big fan of the third man and how it was used in that film, so naturally it looked good to me in this film as well. The other effects used just immersed me even more into the underworld, like the mercury used for the portal and things like that. My favorite effect would have to be the scene where they're not supposed to be in the underworld and we see Orpheus just slide along the wall like he's being pulled away. I know in class we discussed how this may have been done but I still have no idea how they managed to get that effect with there technology back then.
The article Deadly Statuses: Eros in the films of Jean Cocteau was kind of hard to understand the little bits and pieces, but as a whole I feel that it relates to why Jean Cocteau depicted Orpheus in this certain way, and maybe even why he chose to film Orpheus in the first place. What I took away from the article was that homosexuals in the time of this film were taken to be so offensive, and considered to be a disease, that they were imprisoned, and ridiculed against. So from this they were forced to live in this "secret world" of not letting anyone know and basically going against their way of life just to be safe from being locked up. Now I connected this to Orpheus by the two worlds that we see in this movie, one "normal" and the other in ruin. I believe that there is a big use of symbolism in how Cocteau may have used these to worlds in the film to describe the two different worlds that homosexuals at the time had to live in.
Over all Orpheus was a good film , a little hard to understand at times, but still pretty entertaining. The concepts of the film were probably one of the most important aspects of the piece, so make sure you really keep that in mind as you watch.
Hope you enjoyed, See y'all next time!
I agree, I had a hard time focusing the whole time because of subtitles but the French was fun to listen to. I guess I was distracted by that as well. I also wondered about poets and their abilities and enjoyed the class discussion because it helped me understand a lot that I was confused about. Visually I was also pleased and it was just so cool. Good points about the article as well.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird, because reading your post made me realize that I enjoyed watching Orpheus, but when it came to trying to understand exactly what was going on or the meaning behind what was going on-- I got frustrated and lost my interest in the movie as a whole.
ReplyDeleteOn Thursday in class Dr. McRae said one of the major things to remember while watching this film is that it is not the myth, it is a twist of the myth. I had the same problem with you-- we had just gone over the whole story as a class, and it seemed like a pretty simple plot, and I was sitting there thinking, "What the hell is happening? This isn't what we just talked about."
All of your thoughts about the poet are very good-- what interests me is that we never expereinces Orpheus's poetry once in the entire film. I'm not familiar with the original myth but I'm going off what we said in class; Orpheus was an amazing musician and got into hell by wooing its residents with his music. I just found it odd that what Orpheus is known for is his poetry, but we as viewers never hear any of it.
I like your connection with this to Dante's Inferno. I just wonder if it is really applicable since Orpheus in greek myth was really a musician. Although i guess he sang so that could be considered poetry too.
ReplyDeleteThat scene that your were reffering to is actually shot really easily. You take the camera up about 2 stories. you make the wall look like the floor and the floor look like the wall, complete with raises and everything. Also, there is a good amount of wire work in the film already. The last part of the shot when he was 'pulled,' he was really sliding down an incline while being pulled by a wire.
As for the subtitles i watch a lot of anime, which is better in subtitles, and I had to watch 'Life is Beautiful,' last semester which is also in subtitles so I am kind of used to it. The original voice acting is usually way better than any overdub could do. Exception, Hayao Miyasaki's Princess Mononoke.
kind of going off of what bees knees was saying, i agree that this film's plot and character development were set up unusually. the pacing was a little hard to get used to. Even though I'm sure it wasn't Cocteau's goal, i think he could've done a little better at making Orpheus' character more believable. It was difficult to recognize his struggle as well as his passion for poetry because Cocteau spent very little time setting up those crucial character traits.
ReplyDeleteMike, I really liked some of your points and I wish I would've brought them up in my post. The comment you made about set design, using post world war 2 ruins to represent the underworld, was really interesting. For some reason I didn't even recognize that Cocteau appropriately established the two worlds by using two completely different locations and lifestyles in France at that time.
I also liked how you connected this with themes of homosexuality. Although I did find it strange that there wasn't even a hint of literal reference to the subject.
What I really like about this post, and this discussion is how all of you work through the stuff that put you off (baffling plot, foreign language, unlikable main character (who didn't seem to be really much of a poet for all of Cocteau's apparent celebration of poetry), and the density of the reading--all of that, and still working through and with the concepts. And I like _how_ you work through the concepts, by analyzing the shots, not just as neat tricks, but as storytelling techniques. Mike, I think your instincts are really good about the dual worlds and how the film shows them, and about the special powers of poets (and yes that's a near-universal myth) to walk between them, and the way that homosexuals were also forced to live between worlds and, as the reading says, to decode and interpret signs.
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