One of cinema's great colorists, early in his career Markopoulos achieved a palette worthy of Delacroix or Redon.-Kristin M. Jones, Artforum

Psyche , the first film of Markopoulos's trilogy Du Sang, de la volupté et de la mort, demonstrates Markopoulos's great talent for color, composition, and graceful camera movements. Made under conditions of incredible austerity, the trilogy is radical in its use of narrative form and sound/image disparity. Psyche was inspired by an unfinished novella by Pierre Louÿs, and expresses “various viewpoints on an encounter, in which the heroine experiences great difficulty in giving voice to her sensuality“ (Yann Beauvais). Markopoulos called Lysis “a study in stream-of-consciousness poetry of a lost, wandering, homosexual soul“ and felt that the film foreshadowed The Illiac Passion.

“I have only once worked in black-and-white . . . a film called The Dead Ones, which I dedicated to Jean Cocteau back in 1949. . . . In most films today, certainly in the commercial field, they make films so quickly that the technicians aren't patient enough to try to register these various greys, blacks, and whites the way the great Stroheim and the magnificent Sternberg did in their work (Markopoulos, Film Culture).

A Christmas Carol 1940, 5 mins, Silent, Color, 16mm

Psyche 1947–48. With Ann Wells, George Emmons. 25 mins, Color, 16mm, PFA Collection

Lysis 1947–48. With Markopoulos. 30 mins, Color, 16mm, PFA Collection

Charmides 1947-48, 15 mins, Color, 16mm, PFA Collection

Christmas USA 1949, 8 mins, Silent, B&W, 16mm

The Dead Ones 1949. With Markopoulos, Elwood Decker. 28 mins, Silent, B&W, 35mm