The film history class I took my sophomore year was one of the best classes I took in college. Not only did it introduce me to a literal world of cinema; it also encouraged me to actually think about film, not simply watch and consume it. Case in point, Jean Cocteau’s fantastical re-imagining of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

My professor, Wheeler Winston-Dixon, showed a clip of Orpheus in class one day, specifically of the scene where the titular hero — a disillusioned French poet who’s fallen in love with Death herself — walks through a mirror to enter the land of the dead. Immediately intrigued, I wrote one of my papers on the film, arguably my first bit of serious film analysis and criticism. (I no longer have the paper, but as I recall, I got an A.)

Ever since then, Orpheus’ dream-like visuals and narrative have remained vividly locked in my mind, and they’ve even popped up in some surprising places (for example, The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus sampled the film for their song “Nostalgia”). And here’s a fun bit of trivia: In an effort to be extra artsy, my old band, A Dim Halo, screened Orpheus as visual accompaniment during one of our concerts, which the crowd seemed to like.