Review by rogierr

There are nice ideas in this final film by Cocteau. It's a pity he made it in 1959: there had already been Bunuel's l'Age d'or (1930) and Un chien andalou (1929), Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) and The Seventh Seal (1957) that are all brilliant. Not to mention Cocteau's own Sang d'un poete (1930!), in which the relatively simple technical ideas of Testament d'Orphee were already worked out and even better too. Cocteau utilizes terribly slow motion and awkward backwards play. Where Orpheus was ambitious, this is mere pretentious. The acting is mediocre, despite the interesting cast (Cocteau, Brynner, Picasso). Testament is less thought provoking and less surprising than what I hoped for, but nevertheless worth a try. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for conversations about eloquence and poetry at the time. Still it is at least as interesting as Orson Welles' F for Fake (1975) in which Cocteau also appeared so prominently.

7/10