Being made directly after World War II, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast is an enchanting fairy tale which asks the viewer to return to a simpler time, discover their innocence again, and behold an elegant story of true beauty. The story begins in a small, seaside town of France, where Adelaide, Belle, and Ludovic are introduced as three siblings of a merchant whose hit tough times when his shipts were lost at sea. With the family close to ruin, Adelaide and Felicie continue to show little restraint with their father's money, while Belle slaves around the house, doing whatever she can to support her father which she loves very much. One night while crossing the dense forest, Belle's father gets lost, taking refuge in a fantastical castle. After picking a rose from the garden, he is confronted by a Beast who tells him he much die for his transgressions. The Merchant attempts to plead with the beast, explaining that the rose was merely an innocent gift for his daughter Belle, leading the Beast to offer up an ultimatum, either he dies or one of his daughters does. With Belle feeling like the cause of such conflict, she sacrifices herself to the Beast, but as the story goes, things get interesting when the Beast begins to show strong feelings for young Belle. Jean Cocteau is a bit of a minor blind spot for me, at least compared to many of the great filmmakers out there, but what continues to stand out is the fantastical world the filmmaker is able to create, with Beauty and the Beast being a great example of this. What Cocteau is able to create with such basic film technology allotted to him at the time is just remarkable, as Beauty and The Beast is a masterpiece in fantasy filmmaking, using cinematography, set designs, and loads on ingenuity to bring this fairy tale to life. If you like old-school camera tricks and special effects over today's plastic-looking CGI fests, look no further than Cocteau's Beauty and The Beast which manages to still stun with its creativity and visual flares. A familiar story, Cocteau's version focuses heavily on the importance of trust in a loving relationship, with the slow evolution of the relationship that unfolds between the Beast and Belle being heavily built up by the growth a trust between two characters. Nearly every other character in this story simply can't be trusted, from Belle's sisters to Avenant, a handsome scoundrel whose had his eyes set on putting a ring on Bella for awhile now. Through the narrative these characters deceive and make decisions with their best intentions in mind, while the relationship between Bella and the Beast goes the opposite direction, being deceptive at first but eventually becoming supplanted in a firm grasp of trust between the two characters. A magical experience, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast is one of the best examples of a fairy tale committed to celluloid, coming at an important time in European/World History where innocence needed to be rediscovered.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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