French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau directed “La Belle et la Bête,” a romantic fantasy, starring Josette Day as Belle and Jean Marais as the Beast.
It is an adaptation of the 1757 story Beauty and the Beast, written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and originally published as part of a fairy tale anthology.
Belle’s father is sentenced to death for picking a rose from the Beast’s garden. Belle then offers to go back to the Beast in her father’s place. The Beast falls in love with her and proposes marriage, which she refuses.
Belle eventually becomes more drawn to the Beast, who tests her by letting her return home to her family, and telling her that if she does not return to him within a week, he will die of grief.
A classic of French cinema Beauty and the Beast boasts visual opulence that is both appealingly magical and disturbing in equal measure. The impressive makeup of Jean Marais, including both hands and claws, took long hours to apply.
Cocteau says, in his film journal, how the close-up shots of the beast resembles a deer. Clément, hiding behind the beast, moves the beast’s ears with a stick to make them stand up.
While the text and dialogue are straight and simple, the setting is complex in its captivating visual metaphors and hypnotic music of Georges Auric.
The costumes by Christian Bérard and Escoffier are exquisitely imaginative, and the interiors are baroque.
Many of the exteriors having were shot for rare architectural vignettes at Raray, one of France’s most beautiful palaces and parks.
Cocteau shows empathy for the Beast as a misunderstood animal, standing in for a lonely, unattractive, but sensitive and feeling.
Critical Status:
The film played at the 1946 Cannes Film Fest, and won the Prix Louis Dullec in 1946.
In 2010, the film was ranked #26 in Empire magazine’s 100 Best Films of World Cinema.
Impact
In 2003, Mike Nichols paid tribute to Cocteau in the TV miniseries Angels in America, showing a dream sequence which duplicates the set design of the Beast’s castle, and a character is shown reading a book about Cocteau before the dream begins.
