"La belle et la bête" (original title)
93 min
Director: Jean Cocteau
Writers: Jean Cocteau (dialogue), Jean Cocteau (screenplay), Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (Story)
Stars: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély
Country: France
Language: French
Jean Cocteau, a notable artist in avant-garde group, is only gently demanding a "child like simplicity" to watch his subdued fairy tale "La belle et la bête" adapted from Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's story of the same name. His cinematic imagery, surreal scenes, stunning costumes, also every elements (with the support of Rene Clement) with its magical blending gave hands to "Beauty and Beast" to attain heights in world cinema.
"Once upon a time" there lived a merchant with his four siblings Adélaïde, Belle, Félicie and Ludovic and was forced to send his beautiful daughter Belle to the castle of horrible and powerful Beast. The entry of Beast in his black, glittering costume with hairy face, sharp eyes, grunting voice (resembles a cat) is absolutely fantastic in the shadows and lights of forest saying "You steal my roses".Beast is living in a dense forest and he is rejected creature because of his non-perfection; he is a mixture of human and animal and he is cursed to live isolated. When he falls in love with Belle he wants her to marry him and live with him in the same castle,ie, the dark deserted forest. We can see his living atmosphere is so magical and unreal for the outside world, the moving hands holding candelabra, magic mirror, gloves that helps to travel anywhere removing all the barriers, . Cocteau handled this magical scenes with absolute beauty and his surrealist visual language is so simple yet mesmerizing.
One the great visuals i love in this movie is the beast drinking water from a shallow stream. Its so wonderfully crafted with the splashing sounds of water and his animal voice. As Cocteau says at the start, when we say to children "a beast closely resembling face of a large cat, drinking water" they will surely imagine in this way. Fairy tales need only imagination, no thinking, they are simple only the reader/viewer need the simplicity.
When Belle saw Beast at first, she became scared and fainted and Beast says don't look into his eyes. Gradually he is becoming a child in front of her and shivering at her glance, avoiding his violent nature (Remember the scene when Belle telling her love towards Avenant to Beast, he suddenly disappears with anger and returns with blood stains forces viewers to think he killed Avenant, but in the very next cut Cocteau shows as Avenant and Ludovik playing). Sometimes he even losing words to answer her and finally as director says, her love transformed his beastly physic to beauty. When Avenant (Belle's lover) was killed by the armed statue, he became a beast and his body is given to the Belle's Beast which make the story more fairyhood.
Some critics linked this movie with the Liberation of France which is quite interesting. The chained France under German Regime (Vichy France,1940-1944) is finally getting its magnificence. " In love with Belle, that is, Beauty, the Beast suffers afresh an unfree nature despite owning the Enchanted Castle and its spectacular grounds and the trappings of wealth, that is, the magnificence of France. One can go mad trying to determine to what degree, if any, the filmmaker was conscious of his decision to find in the fairy tale such vibrantly recent historical matter, but without doubt the Beast’s predicament evolved from Cocteau’s artistic use of it as the perfect symbol."
Directed by French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the film stars Josette Day as Belle and Jean Marais ( Cocteau's lover) as The Beast.
No comments:
Post a Comment