Cocteau’s celebrated film, scored on this occasion by Federico Deutsch y Verónica Ramos, is composed of four sequences. A poet in his garret, with hints of revolutionary France. The same poet passing through a void into a gravity free corridor, where he spies on different events occurring in a series of rooms. The third sequence features a group of schoolboys, and then finally the set where the schoolboys’ playing area is transformed into a theatre where aristocrats gaze down from the balcony on the poet and Lee Miller as they pose. The film is elliptical, cryptic, potentially occult. It’s also full of moments which other films have stolen, knowingly or unconsciously. There were prefigurations of Nolan, in the gravity free corridor and Glazer as the poet sank into the void. Cocteau, however, goes beyond any kind of coherent storytelling, as he pushes his imagination to its limits. Rather than a story, the film feels like a collection of stories, or strands featuring blood, revolution, homoeroticism, cruelty, and destiny. Among other elements which I am sure I missed.
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