TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS or Do Not Ask Me Why
It is the unique power of cinema
to allow a great many people
to dream the same dream together
and to present illusion to us
as if it were strict reality.
It is, in short, an admirable vehicle for poetry.
My film is nothing other than a striptease act,
gradually peeling away my body
to reveal my naked soul.
For there is a considerable audience
eager for this truth beyond truth
which will one day become the sign of our times.
This is the legacy of a poet to the youth
in which he always found support.
As my hat was cumbersome, I sent it back to that other time
which I could leave only briefly.
I'd like to speak to the professor.
- What are you doing here? - Nothing. Are you the professor's son?
My father was an architect, but he is dead.
I'm the one who hopes to become a famous professor.
That is, some day at least.
I see.
Having forgotten my gloves,
I had to startle the boy again.
Excuse me.
Sir! Sir!
Charming.
That was my second encounter
with a person whose destiny I had muddled against all logic.
Do not be afraid, miss.
These clothes are the result of a bet.
Would that be the professor you're pushing in the wheelchair?
Yes sir.
But can you explain...
Impossible.
May I ask him a question?
The professor can neither hear you nor answer you.
When he was a baby,
something startled his mother... I don't know what...
and she dropped him on his head.
He suffered no ill effects
until one day...
Foiled!
The professor's life hung by a thread.
It broke.
At last I held the box that was to set me free.
I caressed it lovingly.
It's nothing.
I'll just close my eyes,
then I'll be able to continue our research.
Shall I give you an injection, Professor?
No, thanks.
Just leave me alone.
I'll feel better in a few minutes.
It's that fall I had.
One never can tell what these silly accidents will lead to.
Fate probably had a different fall in store for the professor as a baby,
but timelessness had made me responsible for it.
Hello.
Don't you recognize me?
I believe l...
Think hard.
Aren't you the strange character that appeared to me when I was a boy?
That's right.
I was thirteen.
I remember it as if it were yesterday.
You really frightened me.
I'd like to understand.
Professor,
you may be the only person in the world
capable of not trying to understand,
and capable, too, of comprehending the incomprehensible.
I wanted to know too much
and I'm paying for my folly.
I became lost in space-time.
I've been searching for you, and it hasn't been easy.
These clothes are not a theatrical costume.
They belong to the period to which a dangerous escapade led me.
- What year is this? - 1959.
My God!
If my calculations are correct, it should be 2209.
I'd no longer be here.
Professor Langevin...
Professor Langevin was naive, like all scholars.
Only the 19th century could believe in exact sciences.
He did not know that time
obeys the same laws as space.
True, it is 250 years since your departure.
But your return cancels them out.
Those 250 years are of no concern to us.
May I ask how you managed
to travel in time?
Poets know many awesome things.
More than we do, I sometimes think.
Professor, it is difficult to explain being timeless
and even more difficult to live in timelessness.
One becomes confused.
I just met you at various stages of your life
in quick succession, completely out of chronological order.
Just moments ago I met you as a very old man, my dear professor.
Your palsied hand dropped
this box
which I picked up, and by doing so, I believe
I did us both a service.
This is amazing.
It proves you are no fraud
and that I will indeed overcome the obstacles that hound me.
But I fear it will be difficult to make my discovery known.
If it were not for you, it would have perished along with a sick old man.
Am I not right?
This is amazing.
But tell me, my dear sir,
man to man,
do I die here in your presence?
Pardon me, Professor, but I have a very poor memory for the future.
You know the property of these bullets?
At first glance, they might fool you.
It's all in the powder inside.
It's your bullets that made me seek you out
through this terrible shamble of space-time.
If I'm not mistaken, your bullets move faster than light.
Professor, I want to be your guinea pig.
It is my only salvation,
my only hope of getting back.
Do you have a gun?
You forget the only weapon I'm likely to have would be a muzzle loader.
What was I thinking? I have what we need here in the drawer.
Scientists have to be armed these days.
- You smoke? - I won't say no.
In order to smoke in 1770,
I had to pretend to have invented the cigarette.
They said it was an absurd invention
and that it would never catch on.
You realize, do you not, that my experiment requires
that I first kill you?
Relatively speaking. Are you sure it will work?
Absolutely.
I shall unfold a fold in time.
Everything you've experienced will be erased
like numbers from a blackboard.
I know the score.
Have no fear.
Ready?
Fire!
The professor was too clever not to understand
that a mere change of costume
would not be enough to bring me back to our times
in the flesh.
Good luck!
I owe you my life.
You know, I can't be responsible for what might happen now!
That's an occupational risk.
From far off I recognized the photograph of Cégeste
from the end of my film Orphée.
The man-horse troubled me.
I sensed he would lead me into a trap
and that I should not have followed him.
Fate told me I was about to do something foolish
by throwing the pieces of Cégeste's picture into the sea.
Cégeste!
It was you who named me.
I hardly recognize you. You were blond.
In a film.
But this is no longer a film. This is life.
- You were dead. - Like everybody else.
Why return from the sea?
Why, always why.
You want to know too much. It's a serious fault.
- I've already heard that sentence. - It was you who wrote it.
Take this flower.
But... this flower is dead.
Aren't you an expert in phoenixology?
What is that?
The art of repeatedly dying to be reborn.
I don't like this dead flower.
One cannot always revive what one loves.
- Let's go. - Where are we going?
Ask me no more questions.
Judith,
has just cut off the head of Holofernes, Nebuchadnezzar's general.
Her servant girl hovers in the doorway
where the beheading took place.
Judith is no longer a woman, the daughter of a richJewish banker.
She is henceforth the repository of her own legend,
and, as such, in the moonlight,
she passes through the sleeping guards.
Listen carefully now.
In ancient times, who would weave her tapestry
only to unravel it and start again?
- Penelope. - Very good.
And who was Penelope?
Penelope was the last ordeal
Ulysses had to face at the end of his journey.
Very good! And what does this tapestry represent?
Judith and Holofernes.
And who designed it?
Jean Cocteau.
And who is Jean Cocteau?
- A musician? - Right.
And this musician plays...
He plays...
He plays the buffoon.
No, you were thinking of"bassoon."
He plays at being an artist.
Let's give our young contestant a big hand!
Faster. The evening cocks are crowing.
Bring your night out into the daylight.
We shall see who gives orders and who executes them.
Naturally, works of art create themselves
and dream of killing their creators.
Of course they exist before the artist discovers them.
But it's always Orpheus, always Oedipus.
In a new castle, I hoped to find a new ghost
and that a flower could put them to flight.
It's no use.
An artist always paints his own portrait.
You'll never paint that flower.
Damn it!
Aren't you ashamed?
It's up to you, Doctor. Show us your skill.
Let's go.
Where are you taking me?
- To the goddess. - What goddess?
Some call her Pallas Athene, others Minerva.
- She is not to be trifled with. - And if I refuse?
It is an order.
I advise you not to disobey.
- And the flower? - Take it to her.
After all, a goddess is a woman,
and women never object to being offered flowers.
I will not go.
You left me alone in the zone where the living are not alive
and the dead are not dead.
? arrested Princess the and Heurtebise with
me of became what care you Did.
Obey!
I will obey.
Well!
Well what?
Forgive me.
I must be the victim of an extraordinary resemblance.
What are you doing here?
I'll ask the questions.
We are the investigative committee of a tribunal
before which you must answer for certain of your acts.
That tribunal wishes to know if you plead guilty or not guilty.
Will you please read the two charges?
First, you are accused of innocence.
Being capable and culpable of all crimes rather than one in particular,
you are liable to be sentenced by this tribunal.
Second,
you are accused of repeatedly attempting to trespass into another world.
Do you plead guilty,
or not guilty?
Guilty on both counts.
I am besieged by crimes I have not committed
and have often been tempted to scale that mysterious fourth wall
on which men inscribe their loves and their dreams.
Why?
World-weariness, perhaps, and a hatred of habit.
Defiance of the rules
and the creative spirit which is the highest form
of humanity's spirit of contradiction.
If I am not mistaken,
you have made disobedience your vocation?
What would children,
heroes, artists do without it?
They could fall back on their lucky stars.
We are not here for a contest in eloquence.
Put the flower here.
Where did you get this flower?
Cégeste gave it to me.
Cégeste, I believe, is the name of a temple in Sicily.
It's also the name of a poet in my film Orphée.
Before that, it was the name of an angel in my poem "L'Ange Heurtebise."
What do you mean by "film"?
A film is a petrifying fountain of thought.
Afilm revives lifeless deeds.
A film permits one to give the appearance of reality
to that which is unreal.
What do you mean by "unreal"?
That which lies beyond our meager limits.
Some, you mean, are like an invalid with no arms or legs
who dreams he is running and gesturing.
You've given an excellent definition of a poet.
What do you mean by "poet"?
In creating poems, the poet uses a language
neither living nor dead,
spoken by few
and understood by few.
Why do they use this language?
To contact their own kind in a world
where the exhibitionism of baring the soul
is usually practiced by the blind.
Cégeste!
Yes?
Who are you?
This man's adopted son.
My real name is Edouard. I am a painter.
He claims that you are a poet
by the name of Cégeste.
Is "Cégeste" a nickname?
A pseudonym would be more accurate.
Your French is a very subtle language.
Some Earth-minutes ago,
did you not resort to an idiom
forbidden in that world?
Yes, in a moment of anger. I confess it.
Don't do it again.
Who authorized you to appear before this man with this flower?
The flower was dead.
I was ordered to have him revive it.
Can you show us proof of your powers?
And don't think simply disappearing will convince us.
Disappearing isn't easy.
No more so
than the phenomenon requiring a man in love to efface himself.
You forget yourself.
I'm sorry.
I'm in the clouds.
I advise you not to joke on matters
that may alert men to the vanity of their endeavors.
There is no danger of that as of yet.
You were asked for proof of your powers.
I agree with this man
when he says that what can be proven is worthless.
I'm afraid you must take my word for it.
You dare to instruct me?
This is too much.
I shall take due note.
Sir,
I am listening.
Did you write this?
"This body containing us does not know ours.
"What lives in us is lived in.
"And these bodies inside each other
"form the body of eternity."
I acknowledge writing it, yes.
Who told you these things?
What things?
What you say in this language neither living nor dead.
- No one. - You're lying!
I grant you that, if you'll admit, as I do,
that we are the pawns of an unknown force that lives within us
that dictates our actions and compels us to speak this language.
He may be mentally deficient.
Intellectuals are less of a threat.
The poet is like Mascarille or Leporello,
servants aping their masters...
Stop your prattling.
Speak only when I address you.
I was humbly seeking to explain...
No one's asking you to be humble or proud.
All we require of you is answers to the questions posed. That's all.
Remember, you are a dark chaos of caverns, forests, swamps,
full of giant, wild beasts devouring each other.
Nothing to boast of.
Where do you live?
I live here
as the guest of a friend.
What are you telling me?
Where we are, there is no "here."
We are nowhere.
Nevertheless, I just passed by the tapestry and mosaics that I designed
and that adorn the villa I speak of.
You may have passed by this tapestry and these mosaics,
but only because we set these things in your path.
Where you imagine them to be is of little consequence.
Summon the witness.
Where am I?
Professor, that question is unworthy of a man of science.
It sounds more like a swooning damsel coming back to her senses.
I was in bed
asleep.
You are in bed, Professor.
You are asleep.
But you are not dreaming us.
You are in one of those folds in time which you have researched in your work,
research that does you credit
but is frowned upon by our regime.
You will wake
and remember us as figures from your dreams.
Do you know this man?
Professor, you have a short memory,
though it's true that your excuse is that you're asleep.
Did you not just strip me of my Louis XV chrysalis...
cloak, boots, wig, tri-cornered hat?
By Jove!
But I can't take you to task.
You did warn me you couldn't be held responsible for what might happen.
What are you doing here?
Gentlemen, I remind you once again, I am in charge here.
I'd be grateful if you'll be quiet and respond only to my questions.
Under what circumstances did you meet this man?
- It's very simple. - If I may...
- Silence! - Answer the question!
I despaired of completing my research into a method of resurrection.
But my research would likely have come to nothing if this man,
gifted with strange temporal powers,
of which I was ignorant,
hadn't strayed from our continuum, traveled through timelessness,
gotten lost and brought proof of my belated discovery
from my future into my present.
I tested it on him.
Fearing censure from my colleagues at the Institute,
I might add I then threw my discovery into the Seine
that flows in front of my house.
So you accomplished the astonishing feat
of restoring a man lost in time to his own period?
Exactly. I freed him from the pit dug by his folly.
Only to plunge me into another, Professor,
for this twilight in which I have wandered
since leaving your laboratory cannot be called living.
I'm sorry.
My discovery may not have been entirely perfected.
I'm so glad I destroyed it.
What form did this discovery take?
A box of bullets, propelled faster than light by my powder.
This is the box I threw into the river.
Let us hope no sinister mutations ensue.
In any case, it was a wise move.
For an illusion of progress,
arrogant men are tampering with measures, clumsy as they may be...
taken to counter the primordial chaos of your world,
running the risk
of breaking a chain.
You condemn all science, madam!
What you call science.
For there is a science of the soul men show little concern for!
Must I remind you again?
Forgive me.
How would you defend this man?
I'd say he was a poet
and therefore indispensable,
though to what, I'm not sure.
May I question you in turn, madam?
We'll see if I'm at liberty to reply.
This is mere scientific curiosity:
What time is it?
No time, Professor.
Carry on sleeping.
- You are free. - Thank you.
I feel a sort of
difficulty existing.
A kind of weariness.
Sleep.
Sleep, Professor.
I want you to.
Thank you.
My compliments, madam.
I sleep.
Sleep well.
I am not unaware that your labyrinthine path
lies far removed from our own,
though they intersect.
Nor that your success in locating the one man capable of rectifying
your defiance of terrestrial laws
was occasioned not by a lapse in vigilance in the unknown,
but by a sovereign indulgence
which you abuse, my dear sir,
and which may fail you one day.
Should I now overstep my authority,
it is only because I wished to warn you
before consulting your guide about his privileges
and responsibilities.
I don't think I understand.
You are not required to understand.
Don't play the fool.
I think you understand perfectly
but choose to play the simpleton rather than to come clean.
- Madam... - Silence!
You should be grateful for the indulgence
shown you by this preventive tribunal.
Come here.
Yes, you.
You.
Are you quite sure
you did not break free on your own authority
so you could try to fuse the personalities that trouble you
by splitting into two?
Were you not tempted to become but one
in serving the whims of this man, equally double,
your real and your adoptive father?
You must be aware, madam,
of the terrible, infinite number of regimes and orders
that can make it difficult
to know who must obey
and who must be obeyed.
Granted. We will take counsel.
Explain the strange route by which you appeared.
That route by fire and water
was, I presume, dictated by imperatives
of which I am only an instrument
and which are far beyond my weak powers.
Since you persist in this attitude, I'd like at least to know
the extent here, in this place,
of your powers of metamorphosis.
Don't look so shocked.
I refer to the metamorphosis of an orchid
into a death's head.
This macabre and childish trick
corresponds, if I am not mistaken,
to certain resurrectional phenomena.
Was it merely to impress this man
or perhaps a way of warning him?
No. The rite forms part of a ceremony
I have no right to enlarge upon.
The accused refuses to answer.
Take due note.
Do you have anything further to add to your defense?
If I deserve punishment,
I can imagine none worse than being forced
to live... as you describe it... between two worlds.
Afilm director would say "in false contrast."
I'd give anything to tread good old Earth again,
instead of wandering through the shadows of some strange universe.
That is not within our scope here.
The tribunal will consider that question.
The provisional sentence of this committee is that you be
condemned to live.
A minimum sentence, especially at your age.
Your flower.
Heurtebise, the princess?
You know that, being in love with a mortal,
she attempted to infringe upon the temporal laws of man.
- And Orpheus? - His survival was a mirage.
That divine mind died, and Eurydice returned to Hades.
As a great mortal said,
"One must not spit against the wind."
Take the flower.
I don't dare.
This isn't the first time,
nor will it be the last, that I take this flower from you
and return it to you.
But this time I see the courage of your gesture,
and that I may cause you both to be condemned again.
They can do no worse.
What was your sentence?
To condemn others.
To be judges.
It's not pleasant.
Cégeste!
I have my suspicions of this investigative committee.
Our creations are eager to kill off their parents and break free.
Yet these creatures of our imagination are curious about their origins.
I wonder...
Stop wondering. It's better not to.
I wonder if even you...
It's possible.
Sometimes I resent you for abandoning me in the Zone of Death.
Sometimes I'm glad to be free of the absurd world I lived in.
Despite my misgivings, I'd like to help you out of your bind.
But though the Zone knows no today, no yesterday, no tomorrow,
your human condition is subject to them.
To achieve my goal,
I must guide, or rather follow you
through the inevitable trials,
only at the end of which I will find what I seek.
Can you not tell me of these trials that await me
and your role in them?
I do not know myself.
But I'm wandering.
All I know is that this flower, composed of your blood,
shares the pulse beat of your destiny.
Let us go. I have already said too much.
Be content to obey.
I will obey.
Gustave!
Yes, Countess?
Who's the murderer?
I don't know, Countess.
Incredible!
You expect me to read a book from cover to cover
that's not due to be published for 70 years?
I'm sorry, madam...
Your regrets are of no use to me.
Who are those gentlemen?
Which gentlemen, Countess?
These two strangers wandering about on my property.
I see no one, madam.
That's really too much! Are you saying I'm mad?
Oh, madam!
You may go. Really, these days...
Everything's gone to the dogs nowadays.
- Is that her? - Don't be ridiculous.
It's merely a woman lost in the wrong time.
You should know better than anyone that these things happen.
Funny-looking dog.
PRIVATE PROPERTY - TRAPS
Is that her this time?
No, that is Isolde.
She sails all the ships on the seas, seeking Tristan.
It seems to me we passed the Chapelle de St. Pierre,
which I had refurbished in 1957 as my own tomb
for the benefit
of the fishing villages of my youth
and of Villefranche, where I lived for so long.
What's wrong?
Don't try to tell me you didn't see him.
- I saw him as well as I see you. - He pretended not to see me.
You've always said if you were to come across him
you wouldn't even shake his hand.
- He hates me. - As well he might.
He suffered mockery intended for you.
- I'll kill him. - I wouldn't recommend it.
You may be immortal, but if you kill him,
you won't find anybody stupid enough to die in your place.
Where did he come from? Where was he going?
More questions!
He's probably going where you came from, and you're going where he came from.
You spend your time trying to be and that keeps you from living.
Come on. The gods don't like to wait.
I am the Key to Dreams.
The Pillar of Sorrows.
The Virgin in the Iron Mask.
It's her.
It's your fault, Peloponnese. Other dangers threaten you.
The statues wear black by night
and murder those who pass by.
Myself, I am no marble bust. Be afraid!
I have sea foam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
On their knees, scrubbing clothes,
they laugh at you, mock you, insult you.
Intellectuals in love.
Can we have your autographs?
Thank you madam!
What is this statue that eats autographs?
It's the instant-celebrity machine. Fame for anyone in a minute or two.
Beyond that, of course, it becomes more difficult.
In developed countries, the workday is short.
What is coming out from its mouths?
Novels, poems, songs and so forth.
It stops until it's fed by new autograph hunters.
The rest of the time, it digests, ponders, sleeps.
It has six eyes and four mouths.
And don't ask me why.
Good-bye.
I must leave you here.
I'm sorry. Orders.
- Who gives the orders? - I wouldn't tell you if I knew.
Stay with us, Cégeste.
You think one can live among men when they have condemned you to death?
Don't leave me.
Besides, don't you need a mirror to disappear?
Mirrors reflect too much.
They make a great show of reversing the image and think they're deep for it.
- You know another route? - Close your eyes.
Open your eyes.
- Where are you? - Very far, yet very near.
The other side of the picture.
I've said that too often not to understand.
Seventy years of trying to understand, ; aren't you tired?
- Where are you, Cégeste? - Where you left me.
Cégeste!
Where you left me.
I was so tired, I thought I heard washerwomen on their knees
scrubbing clothes and laughing, mocking me.
If you will be so kind as to wait a few minutes,
the Minister will see you.
I waited
and waited
and waited.
In a few minutes the President will see you.
I waited. I waited some more.
If you will be so very kind as to wait a few minutes,
His Highness's First Secretary will see you.
Many minutes, and still I waited.
If you will wait a few minutes,
His Majesty will deign to see you.
So much waiting eventually turns one into a waiting room.
Abandon all hope here.
I thought as much.
Do I sign in?
No need.
Don't bother to knock.
Lazarus didn't smell too good either.
There's even a painting in which Martha and Mary cover their noses.
Forgive me... forgive me.
Pretend to weep, my friends,
since poets only pretend to die.
The Sphinx, Oedipus, those whom one is so eager to meet,
you may one day meet them and yet not see them.
From this walking sleep I awoke on a road,
and as I wondered which route to follow,
I thought I heard the motorcyclists from my film Orphée.
I knew their mission.
I was to die like Cégeste.
But I was wrong. It was just the local police.
- Your papers? - What for?
I'm not here to answer questions. Pedestrians always look suspicious.
Quick, come with me.
After all, the Earth is not your home.
Ask him for his autograph.
What the...
So there you are.
A wave ofjoy has carried away my farewell film.
I will be sad if you did not like it,
because I gave it my all, as much as any member of my crew.
My star is a hibiscus flower.
Any celebrities you may have recognized along the way
appear not because they are famous,
but because they fit the roles they play
and because they are my friends.
The end