sign in sign up
<<
Home , Jean Cocteau, Les Parents terribles, Michel Auclair, The Battle of the Rails, The Blood of a Poet, The Eagle with Two Heads

September 13, 2016 (XXXIII:3) : /LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946, 93 min)

DIRECTED BY Jean Cocteau and (uncredited) WRITTEN BY Jean Cocteau (dialogue, screenplay), Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (story) PRODUCED BY André Paulvé MUSIC CINEMATOGRAPHY Henri Alekan FILM EDITING Claude Ibéria PRODUCTION DESIGN Christian Bérard and Lucien Carré SET DECORATION Lucien Carré and René Moulaert COSTUME DESIGN Antonio Castillo, Marcel Escoffier, Christian Bérard (uncredited), Pierre Cardin costume maker (uncredited)

CAST …La Bête (The Beast) / The Prince / Avenant Josette Day…Belle Léonide Massine choreographed the and Picasso designed Mila Parély…Félicie the set and costumes. Cocteau's activities of the 1920s were Nane Germon…Adélaïde remarkably varied. He composed opera libretti for several … Ludovic composers. He published collections of poetry and illustrations Raoul Marco…The Usurer as well as a novel inspired by his experiences during World War Marcel André…Belle's Father I. He staged a ballet called Le Boeuf Sur le Toit (The Ox on the Claude Autant-Lara…The Port Official (uncredited) Roof) and directed modern adaptations of several classic dramas. Jean Cocteau…Voice of Magic (voice) (uncredited) He promoted the work of young writer , with Gilles Watteaux…Footman (uncredited) whom he fell in love. When Radiguet died of typhoid fever, Noël Blin…Footman (uncredited) Cocteau was despondent and tried to console himself by taking …Footman (uncredited) opium. He credits working on his first film, Le Sang d'un Poète ( 1930) to helping wean him off opium and JEAN COCTEAU (b. July 5, 1889 in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, open up the possibilities for cinematic poetry. Themes and France—d. October 11, 1963, age 74, in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, images that present themselves in this film recur in Cocteau’s France) was a true Renaissance man of the arts; he created future projects, such as mirrors, eyes, statues, doors, and blood. incredible works in every discipline he put his hand to, including After a 16-year interval, Cocteau made his most famous film, La painting, poetry, novels and filmmaking. The variety of his Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), a retelling of a classic artistic achievements is unparalleled, but as Phillip Spradley fairy tale. This motion picture, starring Josette Day and Jean attests, his vision is best expressed in his films, which Marais, would inspire many other filmmakers with its dreamlike encapsulate his thematic obsessions.He began writing at 10 and atmosphere and surrealistic special effects. Marais, Cocteau’s was a published poet by age 16. In the 1910s, Cocteau formed rumored lover, appeared in almost every one of his films. friendships with many prominent members of the Parisian avant- Cocteau made about twelve films in his career, all rich with garde, including writer and artists and surreal imagery. He is now regarded as one of the and . He was so impressed by most important avant-garde directors in cinema. His 11 director seeing the dancer perform with the Ballets credits are Jean Cocteau s'adresse... à l'an 2000 (1962, Russes that he met the company's founder, , and Documentary short), Testament of (1960), 8 X 8: A asked to work with him. Cocteau designed posters for the Ballets Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957), La villa Santo Sospir Russe, and in 1917 he was one of the collaborators on the ballet (1952, Short), Coriolan (1950), Orpheus (1950), Les parents : Cocteau wrote the story, composed the music, terribles (1948), (1948), Beauty and Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—2 the Beast (1946), The Blood of a Poet (1932) and Jean Cocteau Auric turned to writing film scores. Their first collaboration was fait du cinema (1925). He also has 88 credits as screenwriter, or Cocteau's Blood of the Poet (1930). Auric's first American score author of a play or story on which a film was based. He appears very much displayed his depth in conveying the nuances of mood (as voice-over or character) in O Sal da Lua (2010, Short, voice), change in a story musically. This was the wonderful, bittersweet It Happened on the 36 Candles (1957), 8 X 8: A Chess Sonata in comedy Roman Holiday (1953), directed by William Wyler and 8 Movements (1957), Pantomimes (1956, Short), Coriolan introducing a vivacious to the silver screen. On (1950), (1950), through the and into the 1960s Orpheus (1950), Daughter of the Sands Auric was very busy with scores (1949), (1948), predominately of French films but Beauty and the Beast (1946), La some notable British and American Malibran (1944), The Phantom Baron efforts as well. Among several for the (1943) and The Blood of a Poet (1932). English language were the charming American war drama Heaven Knows, RENÉ CLÉMENT (b. March 18, 1913, Mr. Allison (1957) with Deborah Kerr Bordeaux, Gironde, France—d. March and - with Kerr again - the spooky 17, 1996, age 82, Monte Carlo, Monaco) 'Henry James' novel ("Turn of the was one of the leading French directors Screw") UK adaptation The Innocents of the post-World War II era. He directed (1961). For the remainder of the 1960s what are regarded as some of the greatest and sporadically in the mid 1970s, films of the time, such as The Battle of Auric did some additional scoring, the Rails (1946), mostly French TV, but he was busy (1952) and The Day and the Hour elsewhere as of 1962 being director of (1963). His movie Gervaise (1956) was Opera. Providing a unique finesse Oscar-nominated for "Best Foreign to film music, George Auric Language Film". The Walls of Malapaga contributed nearly 130 scores, placing (1949) and Forbidden Games (1952) won him along side some of the most Honorary Awards as Best Foreign prolific of the contemporary Language Films. He was later almost Hollywood film composers. His forgotten as a director. He was back in additional composition work includes public attention briefly when his epic Is Au théâtre ce soir (1970-1978, TV Paris Burning? (1966) (with an all-star Series, 2 episodes), The Christmas cast of famous actors) was released in Tree (1969), Thérèse and Isabelle 1966. Some of his other 31 directed films are Scar Tissue (1975), (1968), The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966), And Hope to Die (1972), The Deadly Trap (1971), (1965), Bridge to the Sun (1961), Princess of Clèves (1961), SOS (1960), The Damned (1947), Beauty and the Beast (1946, Pacific (1959), Christine (1958), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), The uncredited) and Paris sous la botte (1944). He also wrote for 12 Story of Esther Costello (1957), He Who Must Die (1957), The films including Scar Tissue (1975, screenplay), The Deadly Trap Crucible (1958), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956), Le (1971, adaptation), Joy House (1964), The Day and the Hour mystère Picasso (1956, Documentary), Rififi (1955), The Good (1963, adaptation), Che gioia vivere (1961, screenplay), Purple Die Young (1954), The Wages of Fear (1953), Moulin Rouge Noon (1960, adaptation and dialogue), The Sea Wall (1957, (1952), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Orpheus (1950), The screenplay), Lovers, Happy Lovers! (1954, adaptation), Queen of Spades (1949), Aux yeux du souvenir (1948), The Eagle Forbidden Games (1952), The Glass Castle (1950), The Damned with Two Heads (1948), Les jeux sont faits (1947), Pastoral (1947, adaptation) and The Battle of the Rails (1946). Symphony (1946), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), François Villon (1945), Little Nothings (1942), (1942), The GEORGES AURIC (b. February 15, 1899 in Lodève, Hérault, Alibi (1937), A Picnic on the Grass (1937), Under Western Eyes France—d. July 23, 1983, age 84, in Paris, France) was born a (1936), Mysteries of Paris (1935), and À Nous la Liberté (1931). musical prodigy. He studied under Vincent D'Indy (a devotee of Cesar Franck and the German school of symphonic composition) HENRI ALEKAN (b. February 10, 1909 in Paris, France—d. June and attended the Paris Conservatory (1920). By the time he was 15, 2001, age 92, in Auxerre, Yonne, France) is known for his 20 he had orchestrated and written incidental music for ballets work on Roman Holiday (1953), Wings of Desire (1987) and and the stage. With some interest in the avant garde, he became a Beauty and the Beast (1946). Although he used colour, which he friend of Erik Satie and playwright Jean Cocteau and joined their always felt was "way behind painting", his main contribution to friends, the musical group "", whose members were cinema was his black-and-white photography, where he was able impressive: , , , to play with light and shadows to create dramatic effect. For (the only woman member), and Louis example, in Cocteau's Beauty And The Beast (1946), when the Durey. Auric moved into music criticism for a short time and father of the heroine approaches the door of the Beast's castle, then began composing for poetic and other textual formats from Alekan suggests the passage of time evoked by the actor's his Les Six associations. But his stylistic development would shadow. To achieve the effect, he put a light on a crane, which prove to be very classical in sympathy. He especially continued was lowered as the actor approached the door, creating a his association with Cocteau who finally turned to films, and bewitching transition - all in one shot - from a small midday Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—3 shadow to a huge one that climbs the door. He was rather left Once (1968), The Immortal Story (1968, TV Movie), A Dandy in behind by the directors, most of whom Aspic (1968), Hokuspokus oder: Wie lasse ich meinen Mann wanted to break away from the confines of sound stages, film verschwinden...? (1966), Mata Hari, agent H21 (1964), Banana speedily in the streets, and use simple flat lighting, known as Peel (1963), The V.I.P.s (1963, uncredited), Princess of Clèves lumière anglaise (English lighting). Later, however, a new (1961) and Fernandel the Dressmaker (1956). generation of filmgoers sought out Alekan after he had shot a series of conventional Hollywood color movies in the 1960s and 1970s, including Topkapi (1964) and Mayerling (1968). In 1981, Raul Ruiz and both asked him to shoot films, The Territory (1981) and The State Of Things (1982) respectively, the latter being about a film crew stranded in Portugal, among them Sam Fuller as a cameraman. As a tribute, the circus in Wender’s film, Wings of Desire (1987) is called the Cirque Alekan, a place of wondrous light and shadows. Some of his other cinematography or d.p. credits: Golem, le jardin pétrifié (1993), Golem, l'esprit de l'exil (1992), Naissance d'un Golem (1991), A Strange Love Affair (1985), A Stone in the Mouth (1983), La belle captive (1983), L'ombre et la nuit (1977), Red Sun (1971), Ici et maintenant (1968), The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966), Princess of Clèves (1961), The Battle of Austerlitz (1960), Marriage of Figaro (1959), Would-Be Gentleman (1958), Casino de Paris (1957), The Case of Dr. Laurent (1957), Typhoon Over Nagasaki (1957), The Wages of Sin (1956), A Woman of Evil (1954), Human Cargo (1954), Julietta (1953), Three Women (1952, segment "Boitelle"), Anna Karenina (1948), The Damned (1947), The Battle of the Rails (1946), La danseuse rouge (1937) and La vie est à nous (1936, Documentary).

PIERRE CARDIN (b. July 2, 1922 in San Biagio di Callalta, Veneto, Italy) was fond of ballet and theatre as a child and dreamt of an acting career. He was also fascinated with the beauty of costumes and stage designs and in 1936 at the age of 14 where he started as a tailor's assistant. In 1945 Cardin moved JEAN MARAIS (b. December 11, 1913 in Cherbourg, Manche, to Paris, France. There he studied architecture and worked with France—d. November 8, 1998, age 84, in Cannes, Alpes- Paquin, then with Schiaparelli. In 1945 Cardin met Jean Cocteau Maritimes, France). In his autobiography, Histoires de ma vie and Christian Berard with whom he made numerous costumes (1975), he writes: "I've had a fabulous life, a destiny . . . The and masks for several films, such as Beauty and the Beast cinema was the real awakener for me. My brother and I would (1946). In 1947 he began to work for 'Christian Dior'. In 1950 amuse ourselves by replaying at home the scenes we saw on the Cardin created his own fashion house on Rue Richepanse in silver screen." When Jeannot (as he was called) was only four Paris. He presented his first collection in 1953, and a year later years old, watching Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline, he his "bubble dresses" triumphed throughout the world. At that made up his mind to be an actor, inspired by the courage the time Cardin opened his first boutiques in Paris: EVE, then actress displayed in a thrilling scene as she grabbed a creeper and ADAM. In 1962 Cardin started distribution of Men's Ready-to- hauled herself out of an engulfing whirlpool. Later, he heard, Wear, following with the same for women in 1963. From 1989- from the old actress herself, that she had been doubled in this 1994 a retrospective covering 40 years of Cardin's designs was dangerous stunt. Jeannot felt cheated, and swore that he would presented in London, Montreal, Mexico, and Kyoto. In 1991 perform all his movie stunts himself. And so he did; he had the Cardin presented a fashion show in Moscow before a crowd of physique of a first-rate athlete. In 1933 Marais made his film 200,000. In 1997 a retrospective exhibit of 50 years of Cardin debut in L'épervier (1933) and in 1937, at a stage rehearsal of opened in Paris, then moved to Tokyo and Florence. Pierre 'King Aedipus', he met Jean Cocteau, and they remained close Cardin has been a French fashion industry icon since his earliest friends until Cocteau's death. Cocteau had a major influence on collections of the ‘50s and ‘60s. He became known for his bold, Marais’s life and career and the actor appeared in almost every "cosmic", futuristic designs. Some of his designs were influenced one of Cocteau's films. Together they made such classics as by the art of his friends, such as Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso. Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Some of the films and television shows he created for include Orpheus (1960), to name a few. At the Gala de l'Union des The Avengers (1967-1969, TV Series, wardrobe designer, 30 Artistes in which stage folk annually performed the most hair- episodes), The Oldest Profession (1967, wardrobe: Jeanne raising circus tricks or cascades, Marais often won first prize. At Moreau), Bay of Angels (1963, costumes: ) and the 1959 Gala, live on television, Marais, in full evening dress, Beauty and the Beast (1946, costume maker - uncredited), Anna shinned up to the top of an 18-metre pole with a carefree Karenina (1975), Anna Karenina (1974, TV Mini-Series), elegance. He was seen by director Andre Hunebelle, already Joanna Francesa (1973), Arthur! Arthur! (1969), You Only Live famous for his cloak-and-dagger adventure movies, who realized Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—4 he could save the expense of a stuntman by putting Marais under War II. (Friends had given Josette's address to wounded contract for his next swordfight epic, Le Bossu. This movie's resistance fighters). Soon after the Allies had entered Paris, he great success led to a whole series of period action melodramas left and Josette knew neither his name nor his address, and it and mysteries in which Marais performed all his own stunts. In took almost a year for Maurice to came back and thank her; they fact, in 1947, at Cocteau's suggestion, he had already made an would later marry in 1950. She played leads in countless French adaptation of Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas (1948). The public became films, but is probably best known for the role of Beauty Jean insatiable for the latest spectacle of Marais in short cape and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946). She acted in over 50 form-fitting tights, escalading high walls, jumping into saddles; films, including Coriolan (1950), Stolen Affections (1948), or as Fantomas (1964), masked, leaping across the roofs of Paris, Beauty and the Beast (1946), The Well-Digger's Daughter or swinging from giant chandeliers. He was an accomplished (1940), Monsieur Brotonneau (1939), Le patriote (1938), The swordsman for roles in Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1953), Le Man of the Hour (1937), The Bureaucrats (1936), The Barber of Capitan (1960), Le Capitaine Fracasse (1960) and Le Masque de Seville (1936), Lucrezia Borgia (1935), Antonia (1935), Coralie fer (1962). Apart from being a stage and film actor, he was also a and Company (1934), Les filles de la concierge (1934), The writer and a noteworthy painter and sculptor; his monument "Le Adventures of King Pausole (1933), Colomba (1933), The Merry passe muraille" (The Walker Through Walls) honoring French Monarch (1933), Here's Berlin (1932), Un bouquet de flirts author Marcel Aymé can be seen in the Montmatre Quarter in (1931), Serments (1931), L'écran brisé (1922), The Drunkard Paris. Some of Marais other 90 cinematic credits are Stealing (1921) and Âmes d'orient (1919). Beauty (1996), Les Misérables (1995), Les enfants du naufrageur (1992), La provocation (1970), Le jouet criminel (1969, Short), MICHEL AUCLAIR (b. Vladimir Vujovic Caspar on September Diamond Rush (1969), Seven Guys and a Gal (1967), The Saint 14, 1922 in Koblenz, Germany—d. January 7, 1988, age 65, in Lies in Wait (1966), Train d'enfer (1965), Killer Spy (1965), Saint-Paul-en-Forêt, Var, France) was a major French star, yet he Thomas the Impostor (1965), Friend of the Family (1964), Les only had two English-language roles: as Professor Flostre in the mystères de Paris (1962), Pontius Pilate (1962), Napoléon II, 1957 musical Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred l'aiglon (1961), Princess of Clèves (1961), The Battle of Astaire, and as a French police investigator in Day of the Jackal Austerlitz (1960), Le Notti Bianche (1957), Typhoon Over (1973) with . He acted in over 100 films and TV Nagasaki (1957), Kiss of Fire (1956), School for Love (1955), series some of which are Torquemada (1989), Christopher Napoleon (1955), Inside a Girls' Dormitory (1953), Miracles Columbus (1985, TV Mini-Series), Le bon plaisir (1984), Only Happen Once (1951), The Secret of Mayerling (1949), Les Barbarous Street (1984), Mr. President (1983), La belle captive parents terribles (1948), Aux yeux du souvenir (1948), The Eagle (1983), Enigma (1982), Quarter to Two Before Jesus Christ with Two Heads (1948), The Royalists (1947), , Carmen (1944), (1982), Pour la peau d'un flic (1981), Martine Verdier (1981, TV Voyage Without Hope (1943), Bizarre, Bizarre (1937), and Mini-Series), Les dossiers de l'écran (1981, TV Series), The Nights of Fire (1937). Medic (1979), Le Sheriff (1977), Black Thursday (1974), The Day of the Jackal (1973), Swashbuckler (1971), The Mad Heart (1970), The Return of Monte Cristo (1968), Huis clos (1965, TV Movie), Bonjour tristesse (1965, TV Movie), A Mistress for the Summer (1960), A Bomb for a Dictator (1957), Funny Face (1957), Rice Girl (1956), Andrea Chenier (1955), Tres hombres van a morir (1954), One Step to Eternity (1954), Quai des blondes (1954), The Temptress (1952), Anita Garibaldi (1952), The Red Needle (1951), Justice Is Done (1950), Manon (1949), The Damned (1947), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Les malheurs de Sophie (1946).

COCTEAU, Jean, from World Film Directors, V. I. Ed. John Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson Company, NY 1987. Entry by Konstantin Bazarov

French director and scenarist, poet, novelist, dramatist and illustrator—one of the most diversely talented creators of the twentieth century—was born into a rich middle-class family in Maisons-Lafitte, near Paris. He was brought up in Paris, where JOSETTE DAY (b. July 31, 1914 in Paris, France—d. June 27, his maternal grandfather owned a house in the vicinity of Pigalle, 1978, age 63, in Paris, France) debuted in films at the age of five, on the Rue de Bruyère. He thus belonged to Montmartre, though but soon returned to the stage, including a stint as a child dancer to the bourgeois rather than to the artistic part of it. His father, in the Paris Opera. She did not return to the screen until she was Georges Cocteau, spent all his life working as a stockbroker, into her adulthood, and her career took off. Day was the wife of though his only real passion was painting. Cocteau’s mother. Maurice Solvay, a multi-millionaire Belgian chemical magnate Eugènie was the daughter of Eugène Lecompte, who owned the who was reported to be "one of the richest men in Europe". She brokerage house where Georges worked, the family houses, and first met Maurice when he knocked on her door, appearing a rich collection of art objects, including several Stradivarius beggarly, for help to shelter him from the Gestapo during World violins that were regularly used by visiting virtuosi at the Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—5

Lecomptes’ weekly chamber music concerts. solace in opium, then in religion, but before long thumbed his Jean Cocteau was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and nose at , his spiritual counselor, and resumed his later insisted (characteristically) that he was le cancre par old life. excellence there—the prize booby of his class. His school reports ...For Cocteau, poetry was the supreme art and the poet contradict that. He was undeniably an enfant terrible (and was the supreme being, uniquely in touch with ultimate realities, expelled frorm the school in the spring of 1904), but one who especially death, which in his works is not the end but a gateway showed signs of a lively mind and a precocious talent for to self-realization. This is the theme of virtually all of his films, sketching and versifying. It was including the first, Le Sang d’un at Condorcet that Cocteau had poète (The Blood of a Poet, his first homosexual infatuation, 1930-1932). In this silent with a boy called Pierre allegory the poet recognizes and Dargelos whose haunting tries to escape his muse, reincarnations appear throughout wrestles with his past, dies and Cocteau’s work—the shameless is resurrected. These incidents, untutored faun whose mouth and recounted in narcissistic images eyes can kill. of mirrors and self-portraits that Frederick Brown speak, are framed by a shot of a argues from this “that Cocteau collapsing building to show that was already at odds with the they take place in only a ideal double that he would spend moment of “real” time. his life pursuing. Dargelos is a With its dreamlike real name—it may be found on atmosphere and mysterious yellowing rosters—but its is imagery, this autobiographical equally Cocteau’s pseudonym film-poem resembles such for his primal malediction, for surrealist pictures as Buñuel’s the angelic offspring of his L’Age d’or, made at the same catastrophe. A decade after time and for the same patron, leaving Condorcet he wrote: ‘At the Vicomte de Noailles. an age when gender does not yet (Cocteau, who regarded the influence decisions of the flesh, surrealists as rivals, denied the my desire was not to reach, not resemblance.)... to touch, nor to embrace the elected person, but to be him....What Cocteau’s second film as director was La Belle et la loneliness!’ This original forfeiture, placing the locus of Being Bête (Beauty and the Beast, 1946). To save her father from the outside himself, would make solitude intolerable and anonymity Beast’s wrath, Beauty (Josette Day) allows herself to be a form of death. He was fated to crave love in order to be.” This incarcerated in the monster’s magic castle, which is lit by hunger for love and recognition accounts well enough for candelabra held by disembodied arms and decorated with living Cocteau’s constant striving to be in the forefront of the social, statues. Gradually she comes to recognize the Beasts’s essential artistic, and literary avant-garde, and his ardent pursuit of gentleness and melancholy, and warms to him when he allows friendship with all the other leaders of artistic Paris. her to visit her sick father. But she stays too long, and when she ...By the middle of World War I, Cocteau was writing returns the heartbroken Beast is dying. Her dissolute admirer for the , obeying Diaghilev’s famous injunction Avenant arrives to rescue her and to steal the Beast’s treasure. He “Astonish me” with the ballet Parade (décor by Picasso, music fails, and dies at the same moment as the Beast. Avenant by Eric Satie), the great succès de scandale of 1917. Cocteau was becomes the dead monster and the Beast, transfigured by exempted by ill health from military service but made his way to Beauty’s look of love, is reborn as a more princely Avenant. the battlefront with an ambulance unit, met and flew with the In Cocteau’s hands the story becomes an illustration of aviator Roland Garros, and encountered the problems and his central theme: “To live you must die.” To this paradox he adventures imaginatively recalled in his novel Thomas adds thought-provoking ambiguity by casting Jean Marais as l’imposteur (1923). both Avenant and the Beast. There was great praise for Cocteau’s Cocteau’s star rose rapidly after the war....There were handling of tone and pace in the film, from the broad humor of modernistic adaptations of Sophocles’ (1922, with Beauty’s rustic homelife to the dreamlike slow motion of her scenery by Picasso) and of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet entry into the castle. He and his designer Christian Bérard (1924), and an original one-act play, Orphée (1926). Not content rigorously eschewed the kind of misty effects usually employed to seem merely a universal man of letters, Cocteau painted and to suggest magic and the supernatural—Cocteau said of Bérard drew, designed tapestries, tinkered with typography, wrote that “he was the only one to understand that vagueness is program notes for avant-garde composers, and championed unsuitable to the world of the fairy tale and that mystery exists American jazz and Charlie Chaplin....He knew everyone of only in precise things.” Bérard’s gorgeous costumes and Henri interest or social importance, from Picasso to the Prince of Alekan’s camera style are both said to have been inspired by Wales. He also formed a close emotional and creative liaison Dutch paintings, especially the works of Vermeer. The score was with the younger writer Raymond Radiguet, whose death at the by George Auric, who provided the music for all of Cocteau’s age of twenty-three temporarily shattered Cocteau. He sought films except the last. La Belle et la Bête, “one of the great works Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—6 of poetic cinema,” was made in the face of a daunting succession of difficulties and afflictions, described in Cocteau’s Diary of a Sunday, August 26, 1945 Film. After a year of every sort of preparation and difficulty, I There followed two pictures which Cocteau adapted am going to start shooting tomorrow. It would be stupid to from his own plays. L’Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle has Two complain of the type of difficulties inherent in such a task, for I Heads, 1947)... and Les Parents terribles (1948).... The picture think that our work compels us to indulge in daydreams, to was directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, reportedly in close dream the most beautiful dreams. And what’s more, it will give collaboration with Cocteau, who is credited only as a scenarist us the opportunity to do what we like with human time, which is and adapter (of his own novel). normally so painful to live through minute by minute, in order. Central to Cocteau’s work in the cinema are three intensely To break time up, turn it inside out and upside down, is a real personal films in which he explores through the figure of triumph over the inevitable. Orpheus his obsession with the role of the poet, torn between the familiar and the unknown. This trilogy, which began with Le I’m finding it very difficult to make the artists Sang d’un poète, continued with Orphée (Orpheus, 1950), understand that the style of the film needs a luster and a lack of developed from his 1925 play, and naturalness that are supernatural. There is universally recognized to be his not much dialogue. They cannot permit masterpiece.... the least fuzziness. . . . It was nine years before I am not a real director and Cocteau completed his Orphic trilogy probably never shall be. I get too with his Le Testament d’Orphée, which interested in what is happening. he clearly intended as his own testament as well as Orpheus’. It is a fable in Christian Bérard’s part is which the director him self (then immensely important in making the film. seventy) appears as a time-traveler.... It’s strange having to invent some sort of In 1955 the enfant terrible formula so that we can list him in the Cocteau became one of the “Immortals” credits without coming up against union of the Académie Française. “It is not up regulations. His costumes, with their to us to obey the public, which does not elegance, power and sumptuous know what it wants,” he said once, “but simplicity, play just as big a part as the to compel the public to follow us. If it dialogue. They are not merely refuses we must use tricks: images, decorations; they reinforce the slightest stars, decors, and other magic lanterns, suitable to intrigue gesture, and the artists find them comfortable. What a pity that children and make them swallow the spectacle.” France cannot yet afford the luxury of color films. The arrival of Beauty at the wash-house, wearing her grand sky-blue dress and Jean Cocteau. Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film. Dover, surrounded by black chickens, was an absolute miracle. NY, 1972 Yesterday in the sedan-chair scene I used a long The postulate of the story requires faith, the faith of tracking shot. Finally, I deleted it. This film must prove that it’s childhood. I mean that one must believe implicitly at the very possible to avoid camera movement and keep to a fixed frame. beginning and not question the possibility that the mere picking of a rose might lead a family into adventure, or that a man can be With this postponement I have come to realize that the changed into a beast, and vice versa. Such enigmas offend rhythm of the film is one of narrative. I am telling the story. It is grown-ups who are really prejudiced, proud of their doubt, armed as if I were hidden behind the screen, saying: “Then such and with derision. But I have the impudence to believe that the such a thing happened.” The characters don’t seem to be living a cinema which depicts the impossible is apt to carry conviction, in life of their own, but a life that is being narrated. Perhaps that’s a way, and may be able to put a “singular” occurrence into the how it should be in a fairy tale. plural. It is up to us (that is, to me and my unit–in fact, one The make-up men and the dressers know their jobs. entity) to avoid those impossibilities which are even more of a Lucile and Escoffier carry their tiny mistakes as if they were a jolt in the midst of the improbable than in the midst of reality. cross. In short, the unit is an extension of myself. The old dream For fantasy has its own laws which are like those of perspective. of forming one person out of many is fully realized. You may not bring what is distant into the foreground, or render fuzzily what is near. The vanishing lines are impeccable and the Mounier said to me: “We’re counting on your work to orchestration so delicate that the slightest false note jars. I am not re-establish French films.” To which I replied: “It’s funny that I, speaking of what I have achieved, but of what I shall attempt who am attacked on every side in France should, at the same within the means at my disposal. time, be looked to to save the prestige of a country which calls My method is simple: not to aim at poetry. That must me names. I shall do my best to make a film that will please me come of its own accord. The mere whispered mention of its name and the people I like. More than that, I don’t promise.” frightens it away. I shall try to build a table. It will be up to you then to eat at it, to examine it or to chop it up for firewood. Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—7

A film is a monument, but built neither in the present, Beast, his body padded and swathed in velvet, his hands made past or future. into claws, it was his triumph of acting over physique. Lovely Josette Day played Beauty, the good country girl, with an Alekan (cinematographer) hasn’t enough confidence. intelligence and a dancer’s grace that Cocteau praised without He keeps hesitating and won’t take a bold enough line. The result reserve; and she, the actresses who play her wicked sisters, and is a certain softness in his work which I must try to correct. It’s the rest of the cast are outstanding in the way they speak, move, all too “beautiful.” I would like it harsher, with more contrast. I’ll wear their clothes, and form tableaux à la Vermeer and Le Nain. keep at him till he gets it. . . . The Gustave Doré sumptuousness of Christian Bérard’s I told Alekan off costumes and decor is after the run-through. His reminiscent, not in style but in mania for plotting his shots, spirit and success, of Bakst’s yet at the same time making lavishness in ballet. In Bérard, them appear diffuse, revolts Cocteau had found a new fellow me. It’s all too “artistic”. master of fantasy, an Nothing is equal to the antimodern, neobaroque sublimation of the successor to the Picasso of documentary style. It is this Parade; and the high style of style I want from him. his famous perspective of human arms emerging from People have decided draperies to grasp lighted once and for all that fuzziness candelabras that materialize in is poetic. Now, since in my the air, the moving eyes of his eyes poetry is precision, dusky, smoke-breathing number, I’m pushing Alekan caryatids, his pair of Louis XIV in precisely the opposite marble busts of Turks, lend direction from what fools fantastic cinema a nobility that think is poetic. He is slightly had been previously hinted at— bewildered. . . . one can only mention the earlier A film is a piece of writing in pictures, and I try to give films again—in The Blood of a Poet. Henri Alekan gave the it an atmosphere which will bring out the feeling in the film photography the tone Cocteau wanted, the “soft gleam of hand- rather than correspond to the facts. polished old silver,” particularly exquisite in the swaying sheer white curtains, in Beauty’s tear that turns into a pearl. The most M. asked Paul: “Why is Jean making a film? They don’t haunting feature is Marais’ Beast mask, a remarkable creation, so last.” An amazing statement, As if anything at all was lasting, appealingly beastlike as to be more “becoming” than his lover’s- beginning with the world! postcard transfiguration as Prince Charming at the end of the I am not a person who writes to regular hours. I only film. In his autobiography, Marais talks about it: write when I cannot do otherwise. And as little as possible. For my mask, we went to Pontet, an elderly gentleman, a real Writing dialogue bores me. But to set in motion this giant dream genius, one of those men who make you realize that one can be machine, to wrestle with the angel of light, the angel of passionately in love with one’s work whatever it may be. He machines, the angel of space and time, is a job I am cut out for. devoted a great deal of thought to how the mask could be given The result doesn’t much matter. the look of my own face and not interfere with its mobility. He Pascal saw my film last week. “France is the only made a cast and worked on it endlessly. I often went to see him country at present where you could possibly make a film like with Moulouk, and the dog taught us things: the unevenness and this,” he said. Whether it pleases or displeases is another matter. I shagginess and spottiness of the fur that make it seem so alive are have been able to complete it, thanks to the kindness of my due to Moulouk. M. Pontet made my mask like a wig, hair on a colleagues, thanks to the ingenuity of the staff, thanks to that webbing base, but in three parts—one down to the eyes, a second tradition of anarchy which still, in our country, permits the as far as the upper lip, and the third to the base of the neck . . . It intrusion of accident into the midst of order. took me five hours to make up—that meant thirteen hours a day in the studio. Because of the fangs attached to my teeth, all I “On the Making of Beauty and the Beast,” An excerpt from could eat was mush, and that by the spoonful. Between takes, I Cocteau: A Biography (1970) by scarcely dared open my mouth, lest the makeup become unglued; no one understood what I said, and that exasperated me. Beauty and the Beast, the first film of Cocteau’s own since The “In my opinion,” wrote Cocteau, “one must have Marais’ passion Blood of a Poet, and his finest poem since then, is by general for his work and his devotion to his dog to persevere as he did in consent one of the most enchanting pictures ever made, and its deserting the human race for the animal race.” production was one of those undertakings that, with a kind of The idea of the film was hard to sell to a producer, and although general benevolence, shed luster on all its participants. It brought it became a professional and commercial undertaking, with well- new accolades to Mme Leprince de Beaumont, the eighteenth- paid stars, jealous unions, watchful insurance companies, and century author of the fairy tale. Jean Marais had suggested the budgeted financing by Gaumont, Beauty and the Beast film; for him, his face masked by the fur and the fangs of the nevertheless represented a triumph over primary difficulties. Like Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—8 most of the combatant countries, France emerged from the war affection.” stripped; Cocteau himself was receiving food packages from After cutting, after the synchronization of Auric’s music—Auric Jean-Pierre Aumont in California, and when he fell ill, he was was the only veteran of The Blood of a Poet to collaborate on treated with American penicillin; everything was in short supply. Beauty and the Beast—the first showing of the film for an Old cameras jammed, old lenses developed flaws, no two batches audience of any size was for the technicians in the Joinville of film were alike, electric current failed or was bureaucratically studio. The invitation was written on the studio blackboard; cut off; there was small choice of fabrics for costumes; sheets schedules were changed to leave everyone free. “The welcome without patches were sought everywhere for the farmyard the picture received from that audience of workers was laundry scene; the curtains of Beauty’s bed were stolen from the unforgettable. It was my greatest reward. Whatever happens, set. There were the usual Coctelian coincidences and nothing will ever equal the grace of that ceremony organized, contradictions. In the manor outside Tours used as Beauty’s very simply, by a little village of workmen whose trade is the house was found a disc of Cocteau reading his poems; as a packaging of dreams.” That night, the journal ends: “Afterward, setting, the place was perfect—but it was near a military airfield, at ten, I had dinner at the Palais-Royal with Bérard, Boris, Auric, and though the goodwill of the commanding colonel was Jean Marais, Claude Ibéria (the editor of the film), and we secured, he proved forgetful or a poor disciplinarian, and training promised each other to work together always. May fate never flights constantly interfered with sound recording. The Château separate us.” de Raray, near Senlis, used for exterior shots of the Beast’s castle, had “the most bizarre park in France,” with a fantastic sculptured stone procession of hunting dogs silhouetted against the sky, atop a high parapet; that made it, too, an appropriate setting—but there in the north, rain was incessant. (And local children, come to watch the filming, ran off terrified as the Beast emerged from bushes.) Just when the carcass of a deer was needed, the Paris wholesale game markets went on strike. Most of the cast was accident prone. Cocteau, scourged by his post- occupation eczema, so disfigured that for a time he wore “a veil made of black paper, fastened to the brim of his hat with clothespins, with holes for his eyes and mouth,” developed jaundice, and filming was interrupted while he was hospitalized in the Institut Pasteur. The journal he kept during the filming, the predecessor of many later blow-by-blow accounts of the making of movies, and unique in being the work of the artist- moviemaker himself, swarms with the names of doctors. (The maddening irritation of the skin disease was one of the reasons Cocteau returned to opium for a time in 1946–47. On January 23, 1947, the newspaper Franc-Tireur published his photograph— Geoffrey O’Brien, “Beauty and the Beast: Dark Magic one of his few unposed pictures—amid a group of addicts (Criterion notes) summoned to the Palais de Justice. In later years, Cocteau seems Out of the extravagant variety of Jean Cocteau’s work—the to have smoked with moderation, when at all.) paintings and drawings, the poems, the plays and novels and The filming of Beauty and the Beast brought Cocteau an memoirs, the opera librettos and ballet scenarios—it is likely his enchantment reminiscent of his days with the Diaghilev troupe, films that will have the most enduring influence, and among the sensation of being part of a hardworking family of sacred those, Beauty and the Beast (1946) will have the most pervasive monsters; moving from manor to château to Paris film studio, effect. When it comes to “fairy-tale movies”—if such a genre they were like mountebanks; Cocteau’s journal celebrates the exists as something other than a profit center for the Disney camaraderie and goodwill of the company—the actors’ corporation—there is Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and then professional tolerance of each other’s crises de nerfs, their busy there is everything else. It is a safe bet that no one who shuttling between the film studio and the legitimate theaters surrenders to it at an impressionable age ever quite escapes the where some of them were simultaneously appearing in plays, the distinct and disturbing enchantments it sets in motion. combination of familiarity and respect shown by the grips, their It is also perhaps the most self-effacing of Cocteau’s works. His never-failing improvisation when rescue was needed, the studio flamboyance and wit are placed at the service of the old folkloric sweepers’ praise after the first rushes, the Vouvray wine with the tale by Mme Leprince de Beaumont; even as he adds his picnic meals, cast and crew playing cards during rests, Marais characteristic complications to the tale—giving the Beast a hilariously plunging clothed into a one midnight, thoroughly earthly and unenchanted doppelgänger, Avenant, and celebrating with the people of Tours the first anniversary of their adding a mythic dimension by means of a secret temple to liberation. “I wonder,” Cocteau wrote, “whether these days of Diana—he allows the pure force of the narrative to assert itself, hard work aren’t the most delicious of my life. Full of friendship, as if he were content for once to figure as a kind of medieval affectionate disagreement, laughter, profiting from every artisan. An artisan among artisans: the film is virtually a moment.” The breakup was sentimental. “We shall be working showcase for the best in French production design (Christian tonight. The last night. I know nothing sadder than the end of a Bérard), music (Georges Auric), cinematography (Henri Alekan), film, the dissolution of a team that has developed ties of and costuming (Marcel Escoffier). Yet the net effect is, if Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—9 anything, austere rather than lush, a tribute to Cocteau’s unerring we sense at each moment that we are caught up in a process sense that here the tale, with its mysterious imperatives, is governed by laws, laws that may be difficult to explain or even everything. articulate but that express themselves by the most concrete The film is inescapably tied up with the war during means: “Fantasy has its own laws, which are like those of which it was planned. Shooting began four months after the perspective. You may not bring what is distant into the German surrender. The deprivations of the period account for the foreground nor render fuzzily what is near.” Like a ritual fact that it was not filmed in color, as Cocteau had wished—hard performed in order to produce results, not just to make the as it is to imagine the movie apart from Alekan’s black-and- participants feel good, Beauty and the Beast moves through its white palette, with its careful distinction between a deceptively phases undistracted by anything, focused only on the business at sunny ordinary reality and the Beast’s domain of night. This hand. harshness in the background is perceptible in other ways as well. Any prettiness is incidental, mere drapery over darker The storybook setting of a seventeenth-century farmhouse, into and more archaic imperatives. The underlying structure is nearly which we are ushered with the phrase “once upon a time,” is pitiless, an intricately intermeshing machinery loaded with revealed within a few moments hidden traps. Cocteau has a as a place of vanity and venality, logician’s respect for the orders cowardice and petty-minded of ritual and the cruel demands squabbling, slaps and insults. It of ritual sacrifice. His “magic” is a fallen world, in which Belle has, from certain angles, the (Josette Day) seems to withdraw paranoid efficiency of a cosmic into a hermetic suffering amid prison house in which miracles the meanness of her elder exist but only at a rigorously sisters, the feckless opportunism exacted price. The weightless of her brother, the moral happiness that is the perennial weakness of her father, and the promise of both fairy tales and overtures of Jean Marais’ movies is to be attained at a cost handsome and empty Avenant. measured out frame by frame, The hellishness of this in a story more full of suffering pictorially elegant but resolutely than of wish fulfillment—and in unmagical reality, further which, indeed, the promise of amplified by the implied ecstasy embraced in the rapacity of encircling creditors moment of final metamorphosis and moneylenders, makes it an unlikely setting for any quickly threatens to become a more banal contentment. Even as conceivable “happy ever after.” Belle and her prince (the Beast transformed into the double of the By establishing how truly oppressive is the world that Belle and unreliable Avenant) soar into the sky, she seems already to her father inhabit, Cocteau makes all the more uncanny the realize that this is not exactly what she wanted. The instant discovery, by the harried merchant, of a passageway out of it, reaction attributed to Greta Garbo captures perfectly the strange into the Beast’s realm. It is like the breaching of a seam, and we disappointment of the “happy” ending: “Give me back my are carried through every part of the process: through the misty Beast!” forest and up a deserted staircase, through the great door and, in In Beauty and the Beast, as previously in The Blood of a the most otherworldly of camera movements, down the hall of Poet (1930) and later in Orpheus (1950), Cocteau was able to human arms extending candelabra whose flames spontaneously realize the fantastic not as an escape from the real but as an flare up—a rite of initiation that loses none of its power from extension of it, as its reverse side. He has no interest in learning that it was achieved by filming the action backward, and Neverlands or Wonderlands. He approaches the paraphernalia of that it was shot not by Cocteau but by his assistant, René the fairy tale—those enchanted mirrors, keys, gloves—with a Clément. You can play it back time and again without exhausting technician’s dispassion, no more taken aback by their existence the sense of shock at having passed through some ordinary, than by the existence of trees or streams or horses or rose invisible portal. gardens, but endlessly curious about how they function. For If this is magic, it is a shaggy, palpable sort of magic. Cocteau, “movie magic” is not a glib catchphrase. As a science As a true poet—whether writing verse or otherwise—Cocteau of transformation, cinema becomes true alchemy. The mirror in had a poet’s hard-earned mistrust of the merely atmospheric, The Blood of a Poet that becomes a splashing pool as one passes decorative vagueness misnamed “poetic”: “My method,” he through it is not an illusion but an achieved reality; in Orpheus, wrote at the outset of his journal of the shooting of Beauty and the comings and goings between the realms of the living and the the Beast, “is simple: not to aim at poetry. That must come of its dead are rendered in a deadpan spirit of documentary own accord. The mere whispered mention of its name frightens it observation. If magic requires the use of specialized equipment, away.” The result, of course, was a film that, as much as any for Cocteau that equipment includes the whole somnambulistic other, has been praised as lyrical, almost unbearable in its repertoire of the movies’ night side, from Meliès on out. When in ethereal gorgeousness, a triumph of the imagination—even when watching Beauty and the Beast we think at one moment or it may just as accurately be described as tough-minded, down-to- another of Nosferatu or Metropolis or Dracula or King Kong, it earth, ferociously unsentimental. If Cocteau’s film continues to is not with the sense that they have been imitated or self- breathe, as few have done, the air of the fantastic, it is because consciously alluded to but as if their effective elements have Cocteau—BEAUTY AND THE BEAST—10 been incorporated wholesale, as needed, by the resident shaman. room, saying, “You mustn’t look into my eyes.” The magic is sexual throughout—a fantastic, but not in the least It is, of course, his eyes that we look at, glistening from within morbid or phantasmal, sex magic. What could be more direct and the multilayered makeup that cost Marais five hours of free of coyness than the image of the Beast drinking water from application each day, makeup so expressive that Marais’ real face Belle’s hands, although it is so chaste that no censor could have seems a blank by comparison. We cannot shake the certainty that ever assailed it? It is matched by an actual creature has been the tactile immediacy of the introduced into the world, and the moment when the grieving Beast sorrow provoked by his presses his furry face against the disappearance recurs anew on each fur coverlet of Belle’s empty bed. viewing. I doubt whether so solitary The irresistible effect of and tragic a figure has ever been so everything that happens after fully realized in movies before or Belle enters the castle is tied to since, and realized here not only the pair’s aura of forbidden through Hagop Arakelian’s makeup intimacy: her slow-motion skills and Marais’ performance but advance into the Beast’s great through the universe created to form hall, as she moves past the a context around him, made out of billowing white curtains and Cocteau’s words, Auric’s music, Auric’s music bursts out in choral Alekan’s images. ululations; her passage through As for Belle, she is, finally, the talking door, into the almost as much of a cipher as the privacies of mirror and bed; the statue of Diana that breaks the spell night wanderings in which she by shooting an arrow into the spies on the Beast in the rascally Avenant. When the Beast aftermath of his nocturnal tells her, “You are the only master slaughters, while he stares in here,” he underscores the cruelty at horror at his smoking hands. the heart of Cocteau’s fable. Beauty is indeed the master of all The extraordinarily beautiful shot in which we see the the craftsmanlike skills brought to their highest pitch to realize Beast from behind, his head haloed in light, as he ascends the this singular vision: a Beauty who may offer love or capriciously stairs with Belle in his arms, while on the other side of the withhold it, a Beauty who wants only a rose—even if that rose screen, light streams through dungeonlike grillwork, conjures may threaten death to anyone who gives it to her—a Beauty who with gothic intensity the imminence of a sexual fantasy fulfilled, may, after all, know herself least well and therefore never fully in a setting made for such fulfillment—a bedroom hidden within grasp her own all-determining power. Only in the mirror world a castle hidden within a forest—and with Beauty delivered of art can Beauty and Beast truly cohabit. And even for Cocteau, defenseless into the embrace of a Beast manifestly able to sweep master of such a range of arts, what art but cinema—the magic away all resistance. The erotic force of the episode that follows is mirror itself—could ever realize that cohabitation so outdone only by the even greater emotional force of the restraint persuasively? that stops him in his tracks and sends him rushing out of the

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2016 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXIII: Sept 20 Jacques Tourneur Out of the Past 1947 Sept 27 Yasujiro Ozu Late Spring 1949 Oct 4 Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1950 Oct 11 Federico Fellini La Dolce Vita 1960 Oct 18 Chimes at Midnight 1966 Oct 25 Sarah Elder and Leonard Kamerling The Drums of Winter 1977 Nov 1 Hal Ashby Being There 1979 Nov 8 Brian De Palma The Untouchables 1987 Nov 15 Norman Jewison Moonstruck 1987 Nov 22 Andrei Tarkovsky The Sacrifice 1986 Nov 29 Alfonso Arau Like Water for Chocolate 1992 Dec 6 Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck The Tourist 2010

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.