Orphée (1950), sul mito di Orfeo, è l'ultima esibizione autobiografica e tardosurrealista di Cocteau; la storia è raccontata al rallentatore per negativi, con continui rimandi alla morte e al soprannaturale. Orpheus, a famous poet who has become a household name, is hated at the Cafe des Poetes. Jacques, a teenage poet who shows up drunk in the company of the princess whose magazine made him famous, is loved, instead. Jacques causes a brawl that draws the police. Jacques fights with the police who are trying to arrest him and is run over by two motorcyclists who don't stop. The princess coldly asks the police to load the body on her car and commands Orpheus to get on the car as a witness. The radio is broadcasting cryptic messages. Orpheus realizes that the boy is dead, but the princess, in a cynical tone, asks him to shut up and mind his business. She smiles and greets the two motorcyclists that they meet along the road and that escort the car to the princess' mansion. Orpheus demands an explanation but the princess refuses. The radio is still broadcasting weird messages, this time about the mirror (that in fact cracks). Orpheus is de facto locked in a room, a prisoner, although well fed. In another room the princess begins a strange ritual: she calls back to life Jacques with just a few words. He is now a zombie sworn to serve her. All four of them (princess, zombie and motorcyclists) walk through a mirror and disappear. Orpheus sees them and tries to follow them but instead falls asleep. He wakes up in the morning in the middle of a bright landscape. A chaffeur is waiting for him. At home his wife Eurydice is worried. The chief inspector and her friend Aglaonice doesn't know how to console her, but suspects a love affair between Orpheus and the pricess. Anyway, the chaffeur takes Orpheus home. He is upset to find Aglaonice, a woman he despises and who swears some day he will be sorry. Orpheus is hysterical. His wife tries to tell him that she is pregnant but he hastily leaves the room. The chaffeur, instructed by Orpheus, tells the jealous Eurydice that he did not sleep in the pricess' house.