[The early scene between the old man and the black centaur] from Le Testament d'Orphée … communicates something of the sense of purpose and finality underlying the whole film. It is, in fact, Cocteau's swan-song, and completes a thirty-year-long obsessional cycle, from the manifesto of Le Sang d'un Poète and the actual execution of Orphée to the explication of Le Testament d'Orphée, with a shape and symmetry unique in the cinema….

Though this labyrinth of dream associations, latent memories, myth and materialism (Cocteau's paintings and his film Orphée, as well as many of his friends, make appearances) is closest to Le Sang d'un Poète in pattern, it is considerably more successful. Familiarity and time have lent clarity to some of the symbols; others are disarmingly obvious—as Cocteau approaches Minerva, the disembodied voice of an air stewardess instructs him to fasten his safety-belt...