The Orphic Trilogy is a series of three French films written and directed by Jean Cocteau:
The Criterion Collection has released the trilogy as a DVD boxed set (which has since gone out-of-print).
The Blood of a Poet (French: Le Sang d'un poète, pronounced [lə sɑ̃ dœ̃ pɔɛt]) is a 1932 avant-garde film directed by Jean Cocteau, financed by Charles de Noailles and starring Enrique Riveros, a Chilean actor who had a successful career in European films. Photographer Lee Miller made her only film appearance in this movie, which features an appearance by the famed aerialist Barbette. It is the first part of The Orphic Trilogy, which is continued in Orphée (1950) and concludes with Testament of Orpheus (1960).
Testament of Orpheus (French: Le testament d'Orphée) is a 1960 black-and-white film with a few seconds of color film spliced into it. Directed by and starring Jean Cocteau, who plays himself as an 18th-century poet, the film includes cameo appearances by Pablo Picasso, Jean Marais, Charles Aznavour, Jean-Pierre Leaud, and Yul Brynner. It is considered the final part of The Orphic Trilogy, following The Blood of a Poet (1930) and Orphée (1950).
One critic described it as a "wry, self-conscious re-examination of a lifetime's obsessions" with Cocteau placing himself at the center of the mythological and fictional world he spun throughout his books, films, plays and paintings. The film includes numerous instances of "double takes", including one scene where Cocteau, walking past himself, looks back to see himself in what was described by one scholar as "a retrospective on the Cocteau œuvre".