Jean Cocteau's film is a retellng of the Greek myth of Orpheus in the Underworld. In its most memorable scene, the poet (Orpheus, played by Jean Marais) passes through a black liquid mirror to enter the realm of Death, the Underworld. The movie can be enjoyed as a quirky, disturbing adventure which makes clever use of simple cinematic effects such as reversed sequences to achieve a darkly surreal atmosphere. But for those who wish to delve more deeply, Cocteau has given a glimpse of ancient religious mysteries, and a personal statement about the life of a true poet. The theme of this movie is the relationship between a goddess-inspired poet and the Great Muse who inspires him, the Triple Goddess whose names may be rendered as Life; Love and Death.

The Greek story of Orpheus, of which there are several versions, is, briefly, this: Orpheus is the son of Calliope, one of the nine Muses (aspects of the goddess), and he is a great musician. Orpheus loves Eurydice, but she is taken to the underworld ruled by Hades and Persephone. Assisted by the goddess' servant, the god Hermes, Orpheus goes to the underworld to retrieve her. He is permitted to bring her back on condition he does not look at her until they reach the surface world. With one step to go, he accidentally glances at her and she disappears forever. This story may have been part of the Orphic Mysteries, a play/ceremony for initiates to an Athenian cult of Dionyssus, which informed some later occult and mystic societies.

Cocteau's version is closely parallel to the Greek, but there is an emphasis on the goddess/poet relationship, referring perhaps to the thinking of poet Robert Graves, whose work The White Goddess, A grammar of poetic myth, was first published around this time. Graves wrote that a true poem was a sincere hymn of praise to the goddess; and identified an historical series of goddess-inspired poets. He also inferred that there were no part-time poets; that the poet must give all to the goddess and endure enormous trials and hardships, and that his reward in this life was a personal relationship with the divine, and thereafter he was her special guest in her starry heaven, an immortal in both the senses of being a literal god, and in the sense that his fame as a poet would never be extinquished.

Cocteau's poet meets the goddess as Death, though we glimpse the other aspects...her costume changes briefly from black to white, symbolic of Love and Life. Other poets speak of Death:

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Keats Ode to a Nightingale

In another scene, Orpheus wakes in a field after his first meeting with the goddess (the Princess), This seems a specific reference to Shelley's lines:

And a silver shape like his early love doth pass
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair
And when he wakes on the fragrant grass
He finds night day.

In Cocteau's film, Orpheus listens obsessively to radio broadcasts on the receiver in the Princess' black Rolls Royce. He hears snatches of great poetry, while everyone else hears trivial chatter and numbers. We later learn that these broadcasts are made from the underworld by Orpheus' predecessor in the Princess' affections, the poet Cegeste. This too is a situation referred to by Graves. He tells of a poet's fear and panic when he first becomes aware of the goddess, and of behaviour similar to the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia... that is, hearing voices and the perception of "secret messages" intended only for the afflicted party. By means of this 'secret radio' Orpheus has become part of the circle of the goddess, and part of a continuity of poets in that he is communing with the dead Cegeste. Because he uses some of the poetry first created by Cegeste, he is accused of plagiarism and perhaps of responsibility for Cegeste's death, and he is besieged by an angry mob composed mainly of women from Aglaonice's circle. This too is referential on several levels... the circle of women occurs in another form of the Orpheus myth in which Orpheus' head is torn off by the women because he has seen them performing a secret rite. This circle and its secrets represents the ancient temple of the goddess; its priestesses and worshippers, and in modern times, all-girl groups such as wiccan circles or feminist/lesbian societies.

In Cocteau's film, Aglaonice's circle of café poetry-lovers represents a modern echo of the circle of the priestesses which existed in ancient times.

Painting: J Waterhouse: Nymphs finding the head of Orpheus