The prominent French avant-garde poet, filmmaker, and artist Jean Cocteau met the brilliant fifteen-year-old literary prodigy Raymond Radiguet in Paris. Cocteau became deeply infatuated with Radiguet, acting as his romantic partner, literary mentor, and aggressive promoter within the vibrant post-WWI French cultural scene. This intense creative partnership ended in devastating tragedy when Radiguet died suddenly of typhoid fever at the age of twenty, plunging a grief-stricken Cocteau into a decade-long opium addiction.

Under Cocteau's intensive mentorship, Radiguet wrote his classic masterpiece novel 'The Devil in the Flesh'. Radiguet's untimely death profoundly shattered Cocteau, inspiring his deeply moving elegiac poetry and directly shaping the haunting, surreal themes of grief and mortality found in his landmark avant-garde film, 'Orpheus'.