An 18th century poet travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his rebirth as a celestial being.
Testament of Orpheus is Jean Cocteau’s final film and most expansive artistic statement. Answering nearly all of the images and ideas on creation and mortality found in Blood of a Poet, the French polymath concludes both his art and his life with this luminous and lively work of surrealism.