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Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (1946) is not only one of the greatest films I have seen - a perfect blend of poetic fantasy and psychological depth - it’s also one of my all-time favorites. The restored version from the Criterion Collection is among the best DVDs I have seen, both for the breathtaking clarity of the image and sound, and for a wealth of supplemental materials, including several captivating documentaries, essays in a lavish printed booklet, and Philip Glass’s complete opera synched to the film on a separate audio track.
With each re-viewing of Beauty and the Beast, I recognize fresh layers of Cocteau’s vision. As a child, I was enthralled by how genuine, and actually lived in, this fairy record world seemed. And I was spellbound by the Beast, brought fully, both horribly and tenderly, to life by Jean Marais’ riveting performance. I will never forget the Beast’s death scene, when Marais expresses worlds of hurt, worship, and self-understanding solely through the eyes peering out of a feral, hair-covered face.
The film does not need today’s digital special effects; it aloof works perfectly with its occupy low-tech but deeply resonant wonders. And it is a triumph of get. Cocteau worked closely with production “illustrator” Christian Bérard and cinematographer Henri Alekan to give the represent what he called “the soft gleam of hand-polished conventional silver.” It is filled with simple but radiant - and unforgettable - tableaux, from a corridor of disembodied human arms grasping candelabra that burst into flame as you pass by, to Beauty gliding in tiresome motion through the enchanted castle. Then there is the indefinable magic of the scene at the manor with astronomical white sheets drying in the sun, creating silhouettes of striking power. (Cocteau’s crew spent weeks searching everywhere for sheets without patches, an almost unheard of luxury in postwar France.)
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Technically, and aesthetically, it is improbable how Cocteau wrested so noteworthy visual interest from a film comprised almost entirely of medium shots. A conclude gaze reveals how dynamically, yet subtly, unbalanced most of the compositions are. We rarely survey a subject head on, but rather from a slightly skewed angle. And during some of the most necessary moments, Cocteau foregrounds an unimportant object (a candlestick, a tree branch) to block our plan, to originate our imaginations bear in the obscured main details. Throughout he also makes evocative utilize of shadows, both where you would request them, in the Beast’s mysterious realm, and where you might not, in the merchant’s strangely foreboding manor house. This tense visual quality meshes perfectly with the film’s complex emotional nature.
On one level, Beauty and the Beast is a perfect, and largely faithful, realization of a stout fairy account, originally written in 1756 by French author Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont while she served as a governess in Scotland. But Cocteau’s film exists on many other levels as well, which is why it continues to appeal as considerable to adults as children. There have been many interpretations, including symbolist, Jungian, Freudian, deconstructionist, and even blissful readings (Cocteau is not only a preeminent author, poet, artist, playwright, and filmmaker of the 20th century, he is also a central contented icon) . All of these views serve jabber the many, and sometimes contradictory, layers of Cocteau’s vision.
At its simplest and most whisper, the film paints a upright lesson as easily understood by a child as by most adults: Who and what you are - your honest nature - matters more than your appearance. We watch this conception embodied, in troubling ways, by many of the human characters, including Beauty’s two faulty sisters and, to a lesser extent, her wastrel brother Ludovic. But the most morally ambiguous character, and the one who gives the film much emotional depth, is Avenant. He is, of course, played by Jean Marais, who also performs the Beast and, at the waste, Prince Ardent. Avenant is strikingly lovely, self-assured, and energetic, yet Marais also brings out his darker side, subtly in his attempted seductions of Beauty and overtly in his fatal greed at the destroy. What compounds Avenant’s resonance for the film comes out in one of the final lines. Beauty answers Prince Ardent’s put a question to about whether she loved Avenant with a breathless, “Oh yes!” How, and why, could our heroine - who comes to inspect through the Beast’s fearsome persona to the torn yet superb man within - ever have been in treasure with someone like Avenant? That is yet another of the film’s emotional mysteries, the ones which may appeal more to, and perhaps even unsettle, adult viewers.
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One of the most spicy, and visceral, comments on this film is musical. Composer Philip Glass (whose works include the operas Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and The Voyage, and film scores Koyaanisqatsi, Mishima, and The Hours) situation Cocteau’s screenplay to music which runs simultaneously with the portray on the DVD, as the composer intended. The film’s fresh, magisterial regain by Georges Auric is one of cinema’s greatest; and Cocteau knew exactly when to utilize it - or silence - for maximum execute. But Glass uses his patented syncopated rhythms and repeated symmetrical sequences of chords to develop a haunting alternate philosophize for the describe. Sure from Auric, Glass’s win reveals the sometimes shaded and disturbing emotional subtext, rather than the fairy chronicle sense of wonder. Previously I had liked the opera as an audio recording; but when joined with the film I found it utterly compelling.
Beauty and the Beast is a film I recognize forward to reexperiencing for the rest of my life. It has a plan of getting under your skin, even entering your dreams. The closer you view at it, the more mysterious, and attractive, it becomes.
In this, his first feature film, director Jean Cocteau place a standard for filmmaking that not even he could surpass. A masterpiece of inventive, surreal imagery, this film captivates the viewer as few other films have. Haunting, lyrical, and inviting, this film retells the anecdote of an age worn fairy myth classic, “Beauty and the Beast” by Jeanne Marie LePrince De Beaumont. The film is sheer poetry in motion.
This fine, exquisitely rendered adaptation centers around the core of the fairy epic. An impoverished merchant (Marcel Andre) comes across a most current chateau, deeply hidden in the forest, where he is provided with hospitality by an unseen host. Upon leaving, he happens to crash off a rose from a rosebush in the garden of his reclusive host, in order to bewitch it encourage to Beauty (Josette Day), the most beloved of his three daughters. This simple act calls forth his previously unseen host, The Beast (Jean Marais), who tells him that the theft of that which The Beast loves most will cost the merchant his life or the company of the one whom the merchant loves most, one of his daughters. Allowed to return home temporarily, the merchant tearfully recounts what happened to him, and Beauty surreptitiously goes in his position to the enchanted chateau upon a magical horse that seems to sparkle with fairy dust. It is there that she, too, meets The Beast. Alas, the path of lawful care for does not accelerate smoothly, and Beauty and The Beast, together, fabricate that discovery.
Be prepared for a visual feast of dreamy shadowy and white cinematography, as well as one of the most unique sets ever to grace the silver hide. Living statuary, human candelabras, and tears that turn to diamonds are honest some of the elegant, surreal immagery that grasp the viewer’s breath away. Superlative performances by Josette Day and Jean Marais, as well as an satisfactory supporting cast, form this, indeed, a film to remember! Filmed in 1946, time has not dimished the ability of this masterpiece to enchant and captivate the viewer. Bravo!
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