The magic of cinema is sensationally realised in Jean Cocteau’s darkly enigmatic Orphée, one of the great masterpieces of the French avant-garde.

Orphée is a work of haunting beauty that follows the poetic logic of a dream. This modern re-telling of the Greek myth ‘Orpheus’, turns the lyre-playing singer into a famous Left Bank poet in post-war Paris. Fallen out of favour, Orphée (Jean Marais) becomes obsessed with a mysterious black-clad princess (Maria Casarès) and in search of inspiration for his writing, he is compelled to follow her on a journey into the underworld.

Poet, novelist, painter, playwright, filmmaker: Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) worked in many different artistic media. The breadth of his talent and the depth of his vision is perfectly expressed in Orphée; strikingly visual, it is famed for its optical effects and clever cinematic illusions. Characters pass into the next world through a dissolving mirror, messages from the after-life are broadcast from car radios and the princess drives round in a vintage Rolls Royce accompanied by death-dealing leather-clad bikers.