"Orpheus" is a Greek myth about a musician who descends into the underworld to reclaim his dead wife, and so enchants the gods with the music of his lyre that they permit her to return to the land of the living--on the condition that he never look at her. Jean Cocteau set his 1949 film of the story in modern-day Paris, and added twists that would have startled the Greeks, especially a romantic triangle with Death as the third partner.

Cocteau's version has a mystery and beauty. He was not a prolific filmmaker (he was also busy writing poems, novels and plays, painting, sculpting and being addicted to opium). But when he made films, they proceeded not from commercial formulas but from the wellsprings of his unconscious, and as a fellow traveler of the surrealists he was not shy about bizarre imagery. [Roger Ebert's review excerpt]