ORPHEE (ORPHEUS) (double feature w LES YEUX SANS VISAGE) $6-$9 February 2, 2007

Double Feature
$9, $6 Students, Seniors, Members
$2 service fee for online purchases

7:30 ORPHEE (ORPHEUS)
9:20 LES YEUX SANS VISAGE (EYES WITHOUT A FACE)

(1950/b&w/95 min.) Scr/dir: Jean Cocteau; w/ Jean Marais, María Casares, Edouard Dermit, Marie Déa, Juliet Gréco.

Jean Cocteau transposed the myth of Orpheus-in which the singer/poet travels to the underworld to rescue his dead wife, Eurydice-to 1950s Paris and its bohemian cafés. Using simple but astonishing effects (Orpheus passes through a mirror to reach the dark side), Cocteau created a film that he described as "a thriller which draws on myth from one side and the supernatural from the other." Critic Pauline Kael described it as a "masterpiece of magical filmmaking . . . as inventive and enigmatic as a dream. Jean Marais is ideal as the successful, popular poet who is envied and despised by the younger poets; his conflicts, his desire to renew himself are the substance of the film . . . Dark, troubled, passionate María Casares is his Death: attended by her hooded motorcyclists, she is mystery incarnate."

Through the Looking Glass (and Down the Rabbit Hole...) January 19, 2007–February 24, 2007 "The world is much deeper but also more transparent than we think.... And the magic of film consists in the possibility to express any phenomenon you want. That's why I like it so much. Sometimes you may think that I am out of touch with reality, but in fact I am a part of reality, that's all."—David Lynch Rene Magritte's enigmatic paintings, with their deadpan humor and emphasis on monumental objects, were created during a century that saw the birth of both cinema and psychoanalysis and, in the words of LACMA's senior curator of modern art, Stephanie Barron, continue "to appeal to modern audiences hungry for the puzzling conjunctions of the everyday and the fantastic." Though the concept of parallel realities existed in the Victorian era, it was cinema that could induce a dreamlike state in the viewer and depict the visual landscape of the unconscious. Lewis Carroll's "looking glass" is perhaps our most famous metaphor for the irrational, but it is also an ancient symbol with a variety of meanings: vanity, duplicity, madness, schizophrenia, and hallucination among them. Not surprisingly, many of the films in this series are thrillers, and many depict characters whose obsessions become pathological or self-destructive. For filmmakers like David Lynch, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, and Jacques Rivette, the "looking glass" is the cinema itself, and the silver screen is the mirror through which we, the audience, pass. At its most mythic, death is the unknown land that lies on the other side of the looking glass: in Orphée and Vertigo, the characters journey into the mirror to steal a loved one back from Death itself. Alternatively, films such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz depict imaginary landscapes peopled by delightful and menacing creatures. And in virtually all the films in the series, the audience, like the characters, must ask itself: what is real, and what is fantasy?

Official Website: http://www.lacma.org/programs/FilmSeriesSchedule.aspx#1165007846033