Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament d'Orphée)

Jean Cocteau completed Testament of Orpheus in 1960, an experimental French film. Part fantasy and part drama, it runs 81 minutes and is seen as his last word on screen, closing the "Orphic Trilogy" that began with The Blood of a Poet and continued with Orphée. It is mostly black and white, with a few seconds of colour spliced in.

Cocteau wrote and directed it and plays the lead, an 18th-century poet who is in effect himself. The poet dies and is resurrected: hit by a bullet, he is thrown into another age, where life and death, present and future, mythological beings, imaginary creatures, anxieties and dreams run together outside any chronology. In one scene Cocteau walks past a double of himself and turns to look back, which critics have read as a look back over his whole body of work.

The cast brings together Cocteau's close companion Jean Marais, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Maria Casarès and François Périer, with guest turns from Pablo Picasso, Charles Aznavour and Yul Brynner. Georges Auric composed the score and Jean Thuillier produced. Lucien Clergue, a photographer Picasso had introduced to Cocteau, recorded the shoot in stills published as a book in 2001. The film was nominated for a BAFTA for best film.