TUESDAY FREE MOVIE

Orpheus (1950)

Jean Cocteau's 1950 film is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and
Eurydice; the film updates the action to post-war Paris, with Orpheus as a
famous but dissatisfied poet. Cocteau turns the everyday world into a magical realm: mirrors turn to pools which are portals to other worlds, and car radios pick up coded messages from the underworld. Orpheus is nominally about a fascination with death, but Cocteau finds room to examine the role of artists in modern society and how they function as observers, social critics and trailblazers in an increasingly fractured world.