Perhaps the most tell-tale tip-off to the nature of the "Orpheus" of Jean Cocteau … is thoughtfully offered by the author in a signed statement in the program: "When I make a film," says M. Cocteau, "it is a slumber and I dream."

That is as fair a forewarning as any that we can provide to the curious conceits of fancy that you may expect in this film. For plainly the writer-director has let his imagination roam through a drama of images that resemble the vagrant phantasms of sleep. And while the famed legend of Orpheus provides the framework of a plot and the pictorial character is concrete, the context is utterly abstract.

Indeed, at one point in this crisscross of phantoms and images, which clearly defy interpretation along any logical line, the author permits one character to drop this significant remark: "You try too hard to understand and that is a mistake."

A mistake it is, beyond question—for, in telling a modern-dress tale of a young poet by the name of Orpheus who becomes strangely enamoured of Death and almost (but not quite) loses his pretty blond wife, Eurydice, M. Cocteau has so coagulated his picture with fantasies and stunts that a serious attempt to seek some meaning in all of them might drive one mad.

There is a chic and sophisticated lady who rides around in a Rolls-Royce car and ominously hangs over Orpheus. She seems quite simple. She is Death. Only she isn't all Death exactly. She is the Death of Orpheus. But she is also the personal Death of Cegeste, another poet. A little confused. There are also two mad motorcyclists who recklessly knock people down. They are quite clearly Death's agents. We can fathom them. But how about this fellow, Heurtebise, who drives the Rolls-Royce car? He is some sort of in-betweener. What is his place in Cocteau's realm?

And then there are all those mirrors through which people nonchalantly pass—that is, if they're properly departed or are wearing the magical rubber gloves. They are easy. As someone mentions, "Mirrors are the doors through which Death comes and goes." But what is the symbolism? And how about that stupid radio? Why does it drone monotonous numbers and speeches as though in code? You can say it again, M. Cocteau: "It is not necessary to understand; it is necessary to believe."

No doubt the true believers (whoever they are) will get much from this film, for it is produced with remarkable authority and photographed magnificently, thus enhancing the pictorial richness of its symbols and images….

But for this corner's taste, the style of Cocteau, while valid, perhaps, does not embrace sufficient intellectual comprehension to justify so much film, and the visual here lacks the fascination of the same author's "Beauty and the Beast." Somnambulistic symbolism may be art for art's sake. Maybe not. This writer finds it slightly tiresome. It's more Morpheus than Orpheus by us.