Testament of Orpheus

{{Infobox film

| name = Testament of Orpheus

| image = Le testament d'Orphée (1960) poster.jpg

| caption = Theatrical release poster

| director = Jean Cocteau

| producer = Jean Thuillier

| writer = Jean Cocteau

| starring = Jean Cocteau
Edouard Dermithe
Henri Crémieux
María Casares
François Périer

| music = Georges Auric
George Frideric Handel
Martial Solal

| cinematography = Roland Pontoizeau

| editing = Marie-Josephe Yoyotte

| distributor = Cinédis

| released = {{Film date|df=y|1960|2|18}}

| runtime = 80 minutes

| country = France

| language = French

| budget =

}}

Testament of Orpheus ({{langx|fr|Le testament d'Orphée}}) is a 1960 black-and-white film with a few seconds of color film spliced into it. Directed by and starring Jean Cocteau, who plays himself as an 18th-century poet, the film includes cameo appearances by Pablo Picasso, Jean Marais, Charles Aznavour, Jean-Pierre Leaud, and Yul Brynner.{{cite news |title=Testament of Cocteau, a Cinematic Poet |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/18/movies/testament-of-cocteau-a-cinematic-poet.html |access-date=26 July 2019 |work=The New York Times |date=June 18, 2000}} It is considered the final part of The Orphic Trilogy, following The Blood of a Poet (1930) and Orphée (1950).

One critic described it as a "wry, self-conscious re-examination of a lifetime's obsessions" with Cocteau placing himself at the center of the mythological and fictional world he spun throughout his books, films, plays and paintings.{{cite news |title=Jean Cocteau's Testament of Orpheus |url=https://filmforum.org/film/jean-cocteaus-orphic-trilogy-testament-of-orpheus |access-date=26 July 2019 |work=Film Forum}} The film includes numerous instances of "double takes", including one scene where Cocteau, walking past himself, looks back to see himself in what was described by one scholar as "a retrospective on the Cocteau œuvre".{{cite book |last1=Lane |first1=Veronique |title=The French Genealogy of The Beat Generation: Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac's Appropriations of Modern Literature from Rimbaud to Michaux |date=2017 |publisher=Bloomsbury |page=112 |isbn=9781501325045 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BpcxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA112 |access-date=26 July 2019}}

The New York Times called it "self-serving", noting that the pretension of the film was certainly intended by Cocteau as his last statement made on film: "as much a long-winded self-analysis as an extraordinary succession of visually arresting images".

Picasso had introduced Cocteau to the photographer Lucien Clergue who was brought in to photo-document the film's production.[4] https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/lucien-clergue?all/all/all/all/0 His black-and-white stills were published in 2001 as Jean Cocteau and The Testament of Orpheus.[5] Clergue, Lucien. Jean Cocteau and The Testament of Orpheus. New York: Viking Studio, 2001, ISBN 0-670-89258-0