Orpheus: The Tragic Tale of a Bard's Lost Love

 

  Orpheus, as we know, is a figure from Greek legend. His legend has been adapted and retold time after time, with one of the most interesting retellings as the 1950 French film of the same name. The film goes out of it's way to make this telling of timeless, by having it take place in modern France but keeping all of the names the same. Modernizing classic legends and stories has been done before to varying success, such as the 1996 Romeo & Juliet film. I vaguely remember it taking place in California and had the characters wield guns instead of swords.

(Forgive the placement and formatting of these images, Blogger is a mess)

    What stood out to me about this film most was the effects. It used reversed footage in a lot of interesting ways, as well as utilizing reflections and mirrors. The reversed footage was largely used on the reanimating of the dead in a classic exorcist-esque body fluidly raising from a laying down position. The use I enjoyed the most was used with the rubber gloves though. When the gloves were put on by Orpheus originally, they sucked and clung to his skin in this alien and almost sentient movement. It was certainly unsettling, and it's a technique I'll certainly keep in mind for my film making career. The usage of reflections and mirrors was particularly striking. The framing of the shots with Orpheus looking at his reflection or pressing against it was really neat. This sequence from Contact came to mind, as it utilizes a mirror in an equally trippy way.

    These aspects of the film impressed me from a visual perspective, but they also play heavily into the themes and messaging of the film. There's subtle themes of desire and sexuality beyond the surface that, even when intelligently explained to me, I don't quite get. I suppose it's a running theme of my blog posts, but I couldn't place it. I've only known Orpheus himself as the guy who went into hell for his wife, and didn't know about the post failure homosexuality part of the legend until this week. Even watching this movie, I couldn't quite figure out where those relationships and themes were supposed to be. All of the love in this movie certainly seemed straight. The article Strings of Desire mentions the costuming a lot in terms of how they represent those themes, but I didn't think rubber gloves, militaristic uniforms, and corsets on bad guys spelled that out to me, as I've seen them in many other films in similar non-queer representative ways. It also talks about the director's almost strange love of Nazi Chic fashion and his mother's gloves, and I was pretty lost from there. But hey, the movie was cool. French, but cool. 

    I look forward to our discussion on Thursday so I can further understand the subtleties of the film and Orpheus's story. 

- Jackson DiCarlo

    Alright, so... It looks like I totally dropped the ball on this one. I didn't notice until the day after writing this that there were guidelines with specific things to touch upon in my post. So, here I am to amend my original piece with this.

    The relationship between art, death, and desire in the movie, specifically transgressive or forbidden desire. Hm. Don't know exactly what to day here. I mean I read through Strings of Desire and I still feel a bit lost on what's going on here. I suppose I could read some of my classmates' responses, but I'll just take a shot in the dark. The forbidden desire of the film lies in Death herself and her compatriot Heurebise. They each fall for mortals, Orpheus and Euridice. They are told several times by other mysterious death-related characters that they are not allowed to love, hell, they even tell each other in a few scenes. Ultimately in the end, they make a sacrifice to reverse many of the events of the film, namely the deaths of their crushes, so the mortals live happily ever after while they suffer in some eternal punishment somewhere. I could see how a line could be drawn from that aspect of the film to queerness, specifically the "not being allowed to love" part. The art and death part though, I've got nothing on.

    A direct response to something from Strings of Desire. Let's see... Here's a line from the opening paragraph that talks about art in a way I didn't quite get: "To become a poet, to partake of that

transcendence demands the loss of the ordinary self, and the invention of a new, fictional self

made of language. This, argues poet and critic Allen Grossman, is the 'bitter logic' of the poetic principle." This is prefaced with a brief recap of the Orpheus myth, and a statement claiming Orpheus only becomes a masculine hero after he loses his manhood "culturally and physically" because of the loss of his wife and due to his sometimes castration. Yeah, that's rough. This to me is a flowery statement that I don't quite relate to. I love to write, often more creatively than academically, and I've written the occasional piece of poetry before. Sure, when I write something like that I'll put myself into a different mood or mindset depending on what I want to write, but to lose my original self and transcend? Sounds like this major transformation that's required to even consider writing in rhyme. I guess this might only apply to poet poets, like professional poets, not shmucks like me. However, this "bitter logic" is lost on me, and I yet again, miss the point. 

    The imagery I mentioned briefly in my original report, even if it was purely from a "that looks cool" perspective. I mentioned the mirrors and the gloves, but I didn't say anything about statues or the car radio. The reason why, is quite simple: I didn't notice them. The car radio is front and center in the story, but I never understood the significance of it. It just seemed like a plot device that death used to mess with Orpheus with. Is this supposed to represent forbidden thoughts or something? A strange message from beyond that compels you so strongly yet you can't act on it? Maybe. Or maybe I still have no clue. In terms of statues, I've got absolutely nothing. I can't even think of any statues that were in the film. Were they in Hell/Mirror Land? I truly can't think of where those come from, or what point they'd make. Whoops.

    Lastly, my thoughts on how this film expresses queerness. As I mentioned in my previous oblivious post and how these guidelines helpfully point out, we're not talking about a story that directly represents queer people. What is does represent, is transgressive desire. Now thinking back to my earlier thoughts on forbidden desire, I've got a clearer idea on what I could say about this. The movie is about the forbidden love of the two reaper-esque characters and their dealing with it. I guess I didn't pick up on it because I was thinking it'd be more directly related to Orpheus himself, instead of his Death. I can't think of any intelligent way to mention the film being made by an openly gay Frenchman in 1949 starring his lover, so I'll just state it blatantly. If I was asked what difference it makes that he made it and not some random straight guy, I'd say "I don't know," because I don't. If I had to try to say something about it, I'd say he'd probably be able to represent and visualize those themes of forbidden love better than anyone else. Good on him for making this and living the way he did too.

    Alright, hopefully this covers the bases I missed my first time around, and hopefully I don't sound completely idiotic. I did enjoy this movie, despite any confusion I may emphasize. It's certainly an interesting take on a classic legend of old. 

- Jackson DiCarlo, again