Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Cocteau, Jean (Vol. 16) - Bosley Crowther

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BOSLEY CROWTHER

It is hard to think of anybody (with the evident exception of Jean Cocteau) who, however egotistical he might be, would have the nerve to make a full-length film about himself. But M. Cocteau has done it. He has made a film all about Jean Cocteau in his "Testament of Orpheus"….

That is to say, he has made a picture about his own spiritual-esthetic search through a surrealist world of phantoms and symbols for the favor of the goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athene….

[This] remarkable old show-off, who has done enough good things in his time to excuse a splurge of arrant narcissism in his declining years, has made a film that, for all its high pretension to being a symbolization of the poet's quest …, is really just a glorified home movie that should appeal mainly to the poet's admirers and friends.

Indeed, it is almost essential that one not only admire M. Cocteau but also be thoroughly familiar with his "Orpheus" … in order to...

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1. Introduction
2. C. G. Wallis
3. Bosley Crowther
4. Bosley Crowther
5. A. H. Weiler
6. Bosley Crowther
7. Jean R. Debrix
8. C. A. Lejeune
9. Neal Oxenhandler
10. William Whitebait
11. Peter John Dyer
12. Roger Manvell
13. Bosley Crowther
14. Roy Armes
15. George Amberg
16. Copyright