L’Aigle a Deux Tetes (1948) by Jean Cocteau
Sunday, May 12, 1985, 8:00 pm
Jean Cocteau’s L’Aigle a Deux Tetes
L’Aigle a Deux Tetes (The Eagle with Two Heads), 1948, written and directed by Jean Cocteau, music by Georges Auric, with Jean Marais and Edwige Feulliere. Print courtesy of the French Consulate, New York.
Long out of circulation, this will be the first San Francisco showing of L’Aigle a Deux Tetes in decades. It has been said that Cocteau wrote the screenplay in response to Jean Marais’ request for a vehicle in which he could remain silent in the first act, weep with joy in the second, and fall downstairs in the third. A fairy tale for adults (as with La Belle et Le Bete and Orpheus), L’Aigle unfolds in a mythical Balkan kingdom where poisoned necklaces, two-way mirrors and fanatically loyal minions vie with treacherous secret police and invisible forces of evil.