It has the mystery and elasticity of a dream, and all the farcical comic horror of chancing across the intricate contents of the Blessed Virgin's lingerie collection.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 18, 2018

Jean Cocteau's scripting and directing give the film its proper key of unworldliness.

| Mar 26, 2009

Cocteau's visual imagination, leading us through mirrors into a bomb-scarred dreamworld governed by the femme fatale of Death, is enduringly magical and strongly cinematic.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Somnambulistic symbolism may be art for art's sake. Maybe not. This writer finds it slightly tiresome.

| Mar 25, 2006

Its tight cross-lacing of paranoid dreaming and poetic realism grips like a bondage corset.

| Feb 11, 2006

Full of haunting imagery plucked from the realm of fairy tales, Orphe is one of the great cinematic fantasies of the 20th century.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 16, 2004

Cocteau's film technique is as eccentrically sui generis as ever -- his apparent mistakes are often among his most expressive moments.

| Jan 1, 2000

Seeing Orpheus today is like glimpsing a cinematic realm that has passed completely from the scene.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000