[The early scene between the old man and the black centaur] from Le Testament d'Orphée … communicates something of the sense of purpose and finality underlying the whole film. It is, in fact, Cocteau's swan-song, and completes a thirty-year-long obsessional cycle, from the manifesto of Le Sang d'un Poète and the actual execution of Orphée to the explication of Le Testament d'Orphée, with a shape and symmetry unique in the cinema….

Though this labyrinth of dream associations, latent memories, myth and materialism (Cocteau's paintings and his film Orphée, as well as many of his friends, make appearances) is closest to Le Sang d'un Poète in pattern, it is considerably more successful. Familiarity and time have lent clarity to some of the symbols; others are disarmingly obvious—as Cocteau approaches Minerva, the disembodied voice of an air stewardess instructs him to fasten his safety-belt, and when a few seconds later he "dies", we hear the roar of jets. The stylistic problems involved in the use of the same subjective approach as the earlier film have also been largely by-passed. The material has been shaped into a considerable degree of dramatic unity …; and though the spiritual strip-tease method of revelation remains very much a matter of personal taste and sympathy (not everyone, after all, longs to meet an homme-cheval on a lonely road), Cocteau now displays his fetishes with a wit and candour and darts of self-parody which are positively enchanting. (p. 143)

[The] impression one carries away from Le Testament d'Orphée is one of generosity, gaiety and lightness: the lightness of autumn leaves, the gaiety of an absurdly youthful old man, and the generosity of an artist who has at last found peace and contentment in the company of those who love him. (p. 144)