"I shall not conceal from you the fact that I have used tricks to make poetry visible and audible" (Jean Cocteau in The Testament of Orpheus). "This film mixing life and death, present and future, nightmare and dream was unfortunately Cocteau's last film...It forms the third part, with Le Sang d'un Poète (Blood of a Poet) and Orphée, of a private diary whose allegory and metaphorical obsessions are confessions and whose esotericism is an expression of his sincerity. The film is a series of poetic gags that cannot be adequately summarized but that illustrate Cocteau's theme: 'My great desire is to live a reality which is truly mine and which is beyond time. Having discovered that this state was my privilege, I improved myself and plunged in deeper.'" Georges Sadoul, Dictionary of Films