Testament of Orpheus

Testament of Orpheus is a French fantasy drama written and directed by Jean Cocteau, who also plays the central role of a poet. Wounded and thrown outside ordinary time and reality, the poet wanders through a strange landscape where he meets figures who seem to belong to his own past work, among them Heurtebise and the Princess, and travels toward the palace of the goddess Pallas Athena. Across these encounters he looks back over his life and his art, weighing his inspirations and obsessions while hoping for rebirth. The film stands as the closing part of Cocteau's Orphic trilogy, following The Blood of a Poet and Orpheus. It was released in February 1960 and runs eighty minutes.

Cocteau's only other directing credit listed here is Beauty and the Beast, released in 1946, which places this film fourteen years later in his filmography. He also wrote the screenplay, and Jean Thuillier produced. Alongside Cocteau as the poet, the cast includes Édouard Dermithe, Henri Crémieux, François Périer, Claudine Auger and Françoise Arnoul, most of them uncredited. Twenty-seven performers receive credit in total.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.1 from around 4,100 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.6 from 135 votes, a smaller but more favourable sample. A critics' rating of 7.3 from eight reviews sits close to both audience scores.