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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Excessively mannered Cocteau romp., April 26, 2002
Cocteau opens his film with an unneccessary disclaimer, insisting that it is a fictional story, not taken from history (a pun: both are 'histoire' in French); that each character is a creature of his imagination, not a figure from life. This disclaimer is unnecessary because none of Cocteau's neo-mythological fantasies could ever be confused with reality, the chocolate-box Ruritania of 'The Eagle Has Two Heads' in particular. A pseudo-historical pageant along the lines of Sacha Guitry, the film is based on a play, and although Cocteau opens the material out on occasion, he insists on its theatrical artifice, its ornate dialogue and precious acting style, the prominence of costume and decor, the inexorably interior scenes, the prevalence of pomp and ceremony. The conflicts in the play are even expressed theatrically, characters hurling 'poetic' monologues at one another, staging plots and counter-plots. One of the film's themes seems to be about the power of humanity and of love as it struggles to breathe in the stifling stage-play that is social life. I say 'seems', because Cocteau's method is too quicksilver bo be pinned down to a single 'message'.The main characters in this Suchard charade are: the Queen, veiled and reclusive in the decade since her beloved husband was murdered on their wedding night, and who organises elaborate pantomimes to relive that night with his ghost; Stanislas, an assassin-poet and dead ringer for the King, who is run to ground by the Chief of Police and finds refuge in the Queen's Chambers; the Count de Foehm, the Chief, who resents the Queen's charisma and tries to stir up mob revolt against her; Mme. De Berg, his beautiful, blonde spy and attendent to the Queen. Stanislas' delayed introduction, stunned, bloody and dressed in shorts as he stumbles through the Queen's window - after a long prologue intimating treachery against the Queen, the weight of malicious public opinion, the menacing spread of the police, and the suppressed desire of the Queen's admirer spying her elaborate ceremonies with her husband's picture - is probably the high point of the film. He is supposed to be an assassin and a great poet, but it is as if he has been mesmerised by the Queen, emasculated and faint as she talks rings around him, loading this creature emerging from the darkness with all sorts of metaphorical significance. His struggle against these abstracts, his attempt to assert the primacy of human individuality against a backdrop of conspiracy is considerably less interesting, although a camp frisson is retained throughout, with the strong Queen practising her marksmanship, swinging from beams or lurking Gulliver-style through model castles, while Stanislas staggers like an effete goon. 'Eagle' is not one of Cocteau's more endearing films. The cod-historical flimflam weighs down his magical lightness, and the lack of a single, structuring myth, as in 'Orphee' or 'La Belle Est Le Bete', means the film wanders all over the shop without ever getting anywhere. Favourite Cocteau motifs are introduced - windows, mirrors, stairs, corridors, paintings, statues, castles - and bring their own idiosyncratic resonances, but don't add up to much. There is an excess of dialogue, and most of it lacks sparkle. Fans of Melville, who would work with Cocteau on 'Les Enfants Terribles' a couple of years later, will note that the figure of an emasculated assassin caught in a circle or ritual and hari-kiri will reappear in his gangster classic, 'Le Samourai'. Others, noting that 'Eagle' the play was written in 1946, just after a war in which Cocteau's behaviour was much criticised, may choose to ignore his disclaimer, and look for as much historical significance as they can find.
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DVD ~ Nicole Stéphane
