Born in Maisons-Laffitte in 1889 and died in Milly-la-Forêt in 1963, Jean Cocteau was a poet, novelist, painter, playwright and designer who moved among the surrealists, Picasso, Stravinsky and Diaghilev. His film career began with The Blood of a Poet (1930), a dream-logic fantasy financed by the Vicomte de Noailles. His great films came after the war: Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1950), which moves the myth to modern Paris, and the final Testament of Orpheus (1960). He called cinema 'death at work', and he was a major influence on the French New Wave.
Filmography
- The Blood of a Poet (1930)
- Beauty and the Beast (1946)
- Les Parents terribles (1948)
- The Eagle Has Two Heads (1948)
- Orpheus (1950)
- The Testament of Orpheus (1960)