Orphee

Jean Cocteau - 1950
The wonderful thing here is how we see the fantastic in the everyday, and the everyday in the fantastic; Lumiere and Melies. Shooting in vivid fast black and white, usually focussing on one person at a time. It operates by something I am willing to call genuine dream logic, a move from one moment to another, the moves not questioned by more than a brief confusion.
A particularly wonderful thing is the level of detail here; the acting is very precise, with lots of little movements. There are thousands of nice little details, little comments that really bring it to the ground. Among the fantastic chase scenes, we have silly little comments from street vendors; and we also have a couple embracing, then from their sheer immobility it takes on a fantastic quality. The urban comedy of looking in the face is also part of this movement.