Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000

In August 1963, just a few months before his death, Jean Cocteau made one final short film. The film consists of a single, static, and somber shot of Cocteau facing the camera directly, addressing the youth of the future. Once recorded, this spoken message for the 21st century was sealed and stored with the instruction that it be opened only in the year 2000. It was later discovered and released several years before that date. While in *The Testament of Orpheus* Cocteau portrays himself as a living anachronism, a solitary classical modernist drifting through space-time amid the spectral glow of his memories, here he directly acknowledges the irony of his ghostlike condition. By the time the viewer sees this image, he, J. C., the poet and savior, will have long since died.