Cocteau's Intrigue Film

     L'aigle à deux têtes (The Two-Headed Eagle) (1948) is not as famous a Jean Cocteau film as La belle et la bête (The Beauty and the Beast) (1946) or Orphée (Orpheus) (1950), although all three star Jean Marais in the lead roles.  Marais's features gave him an eldritch cast.  His eyes seem pulled upwards.  He resembles already, without makeup, an elf king or some elf warrior.  I've seen Marais, too, in Luchino Visconti's Le notti bianche (The White Nights) (1957); Marais plays a relatively ordinary role, though he can't help being dashing.
     Marais would have been a major star in Hollywood,
     BUT, Jean Gabin was (if I'm wrong, comment) in one Hollywood film, Moontide (1942).  Did he come across like Bogart, making Casablanca at the same time?  Actors fascinate me, especially those who play a variety of roles yet manage to be fresh and interesting.
     Marais is like that.  He doesn't enter The Two-Headed Eagle (despite starting with digressions, this is a review of The Two-Headed Eagle by Jean Cocteau), until the second reel, coming in dramatically in a thunderstorm through the Queen's window, there to assassinate her, though reluctant to do so.
     He's a poet who wrote a scandalous poem in the biggest local newspaper.  He's John the Baptist to her Herodias, in a sense, though not a sexual one.  Yet, Marais falls in love with her, she with him (?).
     I had a hard time following this film during the first half.  My fault.  Tiredness combined with anxiety doesn't make a good film watching experience.  After a while though I began to get into it.  Some shouting matches between the Queen (Edwige Feuillére) and Marais resound with tension driven forward into the story so the viewer doesn't know (I didn't know) where the film was heading.
     Everything gets wrapped up.  I don't remember how it turns out.
     Cocteau's ornate use of designed space makes him stand out as other directors in that vein, like Josef von Sternberg or Orson Welles.
     Really, I cared very little about this film's story.  I couldn't follow it.  It appears to take place about 1877 in some fictitious European constitutional monarchy.  The King died ten years ago, assassinated, "the blood spurted onto his knees," she describes.
     She's been the de facto ruler of this country for a decade.  Lots of rumors surround her.  Scandalmongers love her.
     She throws lavish parties, implications of orgies, maybe.  Stanislas (Marais) becomes the intruder welcomed, hidden too, for he's wanted for murder or something.  The Chief of Police questions the Queen about the whereabouts of Stanislas.  Stanislas watched from behind a two-way mirror.  The Queen is the kind of woman who has a two-way mirror in her apartment, installed actually by her father.
     A weird, intricate plot.  Stay alert while watching this film; it's rewarding after close regard.

Vic Neptune
          

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