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BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

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rayban	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST	Lead	[-]
Posts: 18192 Sep 22 09 9:55 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tags : None "Beauty and the Beast" - "La Belle et Le Bete" - 1946 - Jean Cocteau Jean Cocteau's first fiction film must be the most exquisite rendering ever of a fairy tale - its level of visual inventiveness is both astonishing and spellbinding. Josette Day is the perfect beauty and Jean Marais is a heartbreaking beast. I was surprised by the amount of suffering that the beast was shown to endure - like his coming back from an animal slaughtering, apparently, covered in blood and giving off smoke, too. And I was surprised by beauty's insistence on having little or nothing to do with him for so long. That ending, with Day and Marais floating upward in transit to Marais' kingdom, was unforgettable. I wish that Cocteau and Marais and Day had done another fairy tale, but Cocteau probably wasn't interested in repeating himself.
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HarryLong		#1	[-]
Posts: 25166 Sep 27 09 11:18 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	>>Jean Cocteau's first fiction film<< Are we discounting Le sang d'un poète (1930) and the several films he wrote in between? The Mysterious Mr. Long
rayban	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST	#2	[-]
Posts: 18192 Sep 28 09 9:31 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm no expert on Jean Cocteau, but, if you want to include "The Blood Of A Poet" (which, I believe, is a wholly personal expression of Cocteau's inner life) and the three films that he was involved in as a screenwriter BEFORE "Beauty and the Beast", you can include them. There was a 15-year gap between "The Blood Of A Poet" and "Beauty and the Beast".
rayban	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST	#3	[-]
Posts: 18192 Oct 9 09 9:50 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Of course, it's impossible to know, but I couldn't help wondering how much of "Beauty and the Beast" was inspired by Jean Cocteau's relationship with his lover, Jean Marais - whatever, Cocteau gave to Marais one of the greatest roles in cinema history - the horrid-looking, long-suffering "Le Bete", who is impossible to forget.
HarryLong		#4	[-]
Posts: 25166 Oct 14 09 9:38 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Certainly Cocteau became re-involved in film because of Marais. Marais was peforming in Cocteau's plays but professed a desire to become a movie star & Cocteau knew he had to become involved in film production to hold onto him. The Mysterious Mr. Long
rayban	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST	#5	[-]
Posts: 18192 Oct 15 09 9:30 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	And, so, a one-of-a-kind film classic was born.
rayban	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST	#6	[-]
Posts: 18192 Oct 27 09 9:27 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Beauty enters the Beast's enchanted castle - one of the cinema's most breathtaking moments.
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kevin g shinnick		#7	[-]
Posts: 15102 Nov 13 09 8:38 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Considering the conditions the film was made under, it is even more amazing how beautiful the fim is. The 1940s allowed European cinema to once again blossom ,producing works like this as well as THE BICYCLE THIEF (1948 ). How sad that many of today's audiences will not watch such treasures because a)they have subtitles b)they are in black & white.
luluthebeast		#8	[-]
Posts: 7857 Nov 13 09 11:45 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	And don't forget: c) sometimes you actually have to think.
rayban	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST	#9	[-]
Posts: 18192 Nov 15 09 11:48 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Of course, the film was written and directed by Jean Cocteau - and his sensibility certainly rules the film all of the time - but he did work with some truly inspired craftsmen on this one - Henri Alekan, cinematography, Christian Berard and Lucien Carol, production design and Georges Auric, score.
HarryLong		#10	[-]
Posts: 25166 Nov 18 09 11:50 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	>>Considering the conditions the film was made under, it is even more amazing how beautiful the fim is.<< Ah, you've read his diary of the filming ... The Mysterious Mr. Long
rayban	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST	#11	[-]
Posts: 18192 Dec 6 09 12:09 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Once upon a time, in France, there was a rather acerbic theatre critic, Alain Laubreaux, who used to refer to Jean Marais as - "The man with the cocteau between his teeth". The use of the name "cocteau" was a pun on the French word for knife, "couteau".
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