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Beauty and the Beast
French	La Belle et la Bête
Directed by	Jean Cocteau
Screenplay by	Jean Cocteau
Based on	"Beauty and the Beast" by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
Produced by	André Paulvé
Starring	Jean Marais Josette Day
Cinematography	Henri Alekan
Edited by	Claude Ibéria
Music by	Georges Auric
Distributed by	DisCina
Release date	29 October 1946 (1946-10-29)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	France
Language	French
Box office	4,202,951 admissions (France)

Beauty and the Beast (French: La Belle et la Bête) is a 1946 romantic fantasy film written and directed by Jean Cocteau in his feature-film directorial debut. An adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 abridgement of the fairy tale of the same name, it stars Josette Day and Jean Marais as the respective title characters.

The film's production was marked by significant difficulties, including the economic constraints of World War II, the technical challenges of creating the Beast's makeup, and Cocteau's persistent health problems.

Plot

The Beast (Jean Marais) confronts Belle's father after catching him plucking a rose from his garden.

While scrubbing the floor at home, Belle is interrupted by her brother's friend Avenant, who tells her she deserves better and suggests they get married. Belle rejects Avenant, as she wishes to stay home and take care of her father, who has suffered much since his ships were lost at sea and the family fortune along with them. Belle's father arrives home announcing he has come into a great fortune that he will pick up the next day, along with gifts for his daughters, Belle and her shrewish sisters Adelaide and Felicie. Belle's roguish brother Ludovic, believing they will soon be wealthy, signs a contract from a moneylender allowing him the ability to sue Ludovic's father if he can not pay. Belle's sisters ask for a monkey and a parrot as gifts, but Belle asks only for a rose.

However, the next day, Belle's father finds on his arrival that his fortune has been seized to clear his debts and he is as penniless as before. He has no money for lodging and is forced to return home through a forest at night. He gets lost in the forest and finds himself at a large castle whose gates and doors magically open themselves. On entering the castle, he is guided by an enchanted candelabra that leads him to a laden dinner table where he falls asleep. Awakened by a loud roar, he wanders the castle's grounds. Remembering that Belle asked for a rose, he plucks a rose from a tree which makes the Beast appear. The Beast threatens to kill him for theft but suggests that one of his daughters can take his place. The Beast offers his horse Magnificent to guide him through the forest and to his home.

Belle (Josette Day) meets the Beast during their first dinner at his castle.

Belle's father explains the situation to his family and Avenant. Belle agrees to take her father's place and rides Magnificent to the castle. Upon meeting the Beast, Belle faints at his monstrous appearance and is carried to her room in the castle. Belle awakens to find a magic mirror which allows her to see anything. The Beast invites Belle to dinner, where he tells her that she is in equal command to him and that she will be asked every day to marry him. Days pass as Belle grows more accustomed to and fond of the Beast, but she continues to refuse marriage. Using the magic mirror, Belle sees that her father has become deathly ill. Belle begs for permission to visit her family and the Beast reluctantly grants her permission to leave for a week. He gives Belle two magical items; a glove that can transport her wherever she wishes and a golden key that unlocks Diana's Pavilion, the source of the Beast's true riches. He tells Belle that he gives her these precious items to show his trust in her, and says that if she does not return at the end of the week, he will die of grief.

Belle uses the glove to appear in her bedridden father's room, where her visit restores him to health. Belle finds her family living in poverty, having never recovered from Ludovic's deal with the moneylender. Jealous of Belle's rich life at the castle, Adelaide and Felicie steal her golden key and devise a plan to turn Ludovic and Avenant against the Beast. Avenant and Ludovic devise a plan of their own to kill the Beast, and agree to aid Belle's sisters. To stall Belle, her sisters trick her into staying past her seven-day limit by pretending to love her. Belle reluctantly agrees to stay.

The Beast sends Magnificent with the magic mirror to retrieve Belle but Ludovic and Avenant find Magnificent first, and ride him to the castle. Belle later finds the mirror which reveals the Beast's sorrowful face in its reflection. Belle realizes she is missing the golden key as the mirror breaks. Distraught, Belle returns to the castle using the magic glove and finds the Beast in the courtyard, near death from a broken heart.

Meanwhile, Avenant and Ludovic stumble upon Diana's Pavilion. Thinking that their stolen key may trigger a trap, they scale the wall of the Pavilion. As the Beast dies in Belle's arms, Avenant breaks into the Pavilion through its glass roof, whereupon he is shot with an arrow by an animated statue of the Roman goddess, Diana and is himself turned into a Beast. As this happens, arising from where the Beast lay dead is Prince Ardent, who is cured of being the Beast. He explains that because his parents did not believe in spirits, the spirits had turned him into the Beast as revenge. Prince Ardent and Belle embrace, then fly away to his kingdom where she will be his queen. He promises that her father will stay with them and Belle's sisters will carry the train of her gown.

Cast

• Jean Marais as the Beast, Avenant, and Ardent
• Josette Day as Belle
• Marcel André as Belle's Father
• Mila Parély as Félicie
• Nane Germon as Adélaïde
• Michel Auclair as Ludovic
• Raoul Marco as the Usurer

Style and themes

https://archive.org/details/per_documentary-film-news_film_summer-1947_1_5/page/n31/mode/2up?q=%22beast%22

https://www.cinematheque.fr/article/2088.html

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Production

Jean Cocteau during the shooting of Beauty and the Beast.

The idea to adapt the story reportedly came at the suggestion of actor Jean Marais, Cocteau's lover, who was looking for a role that would emphasize acting over physical attractiveness. In interviews, however, Cocteau also stated that the story had been a childhood favorite of his, and that he "loved 'Beauty and the Beast' with a love that had to translate itself, sooner or later, into a play or a film."

Planned during World War II and filmed four months after Germany's surrender in May 1945, the production of Beauty and the Beast was significantly shaped by wartime material shortages.

Among these shortages was the inability to shoot in color as Cocteau had planned, though Henri Alekan's black-and-white cinematography has since been widely regarded as a defining strength of the film.

For my mask, we went to Pontet, an elderly gentleman, a real genius, one of those men who make you realize that one can be passionately in love with one's work whatever it may be. He devoted a great deal of thought to how the mask could be given the look of my own face and not interfere with its mobility. He made a cast and worked on it endlessly. I often went to see him with Moulouk, and the dog taught us things: the unevenness and shagginess and spottiness of the fur that make it seem so alive are due to Moulouk. M. Pontet made my mask like a wig, hair on a webbing base, but in three parts—one down to the eyes, a second as far as the upper lip, and the third to the base of the neck (...) It 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 could eat was mush, and that by the spoonful. Between takes, I scarcely dared open my mouth, lest the makeup become unglued; no one understood what I said, and that exasperated me.

https://www.cinematheque.fr/journalcocteau/

Release

Reception

Critical reception

Cocteau in 1945.

Upon its release, Beauty and the Beast strongly divided French critics, with some praising its poetic ambition while many others condemned it harshly as cold or overly stylized, Writing for L'Humanité after the film's Cannes premiere, Guy Leclerc acknowledged its visual beauty and accomplished staging but criticized the "unhealthy atmosphere" of Belle's flirtation with the Beast and the surrealist "tricks", which he saw as revealing "quite troubling complexes." He concluded that the film's beauty was "intellectual, calculated, manufactured by an aesthete for aesthetes," and that "despite the near-perfection it sometimes achieves, it did not move us for a single moment." Likewise, Roger Proville of La Jeune République wrote that Beauty and the Beast, "despite the perfection of its images and sets, is a slow, artificial, overly intellectual film." Proville unfavorably compared the film to Roberto Rossellini's contemporaneous Rome, Open City, arguing that the two works embodied two divergent tendencies in cinema. Jeanine Delpech of the newspaper France wrote that Beauty and the Beast "delights the mind, the eye, and the ear," but "barely touches the soul."

In a more negative review, Jacqueline Lenoir of the socialist periodical Gavroche felt that the film "cannot convince us in the way Jean Cocteau wished. More naivety, more purity would have been needed. A fairy tale—this dark delirium of a fashionable aesthete? Come now, let us be serious (...). There will be swooning women who coo that it is 'delightful' and distinguished men who insist there is 'something' there. I could not tell you what." La Gazette provençale published a highly ambivalent review, criticizing the film as "anti-cinematic, boring, poorly acted" and a "profound disappointment", while praising its "admirable images." The review concluded that the film was "one of the most significant works in our cinema. A paradox. Beauty and the Beast is a failed film, but it is a failure that everyone must see; above all, it is a failure that will bring more to French cinema than many a commonplace success."

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was among the critics who praised the film the most.

Following its international premiere in 1947, Beauty and the Beast received a generally warmer critical reception in the United States than it did in France, including a highly favorable notice from Bosley Crowther in The New York Times. Crowther described the film as an "eminent model of cinema achievement in the realm of poetic fantasy," though he clarified that the "achievement is on a definitely adult plane and the beauties of Cocteau's conception will be most appreciated by sophisticated minds." The critic praised the film's mood, mise-en-scène, and performances, while defining it as a "fabric of gorgeous visual metaphors, of undulating movements and rhythmic pace, of hypnotic sounds and music, of casually congealing ideas. Freudian or metaphysician, you can take from it what you will." Newsweek's review praised the film's visuals as a "delight", Berard's set design as "magnificent", and Escoffier's costumes as "perfect for the story's never-never period", concluding that Beauty and the Beast serves a "brilliant example of what cameras can do with a poet in charge."

Time described Beauty and the Beast as a "wondrous spectacle for children of any language, and quite a treat for their parents, too." The magazine praised the film's surrealist elements, noting that they are "applied to several scenes with absolute poetic tightness," although it concluded that, "unfortunately, Cocteau makes about a half-hour too much of a good thing—and few things pall like a dream that cannot be shaken off." Writing for Variety, William Brogdon described Beauty and the Beast as a "fairy tale for grown ups", noting that it is a "little grisly at times for the kiddies, but adults will see its fine points." Brogdon commended the film's style, performances, and the "delicate" and "artistic hand" of Cocteau's direction, although he also criticized it for being "slow-moving and quite obvious", concluding that it would appeal primarily to art-house audiences. Likewise, F. H. of the trade magazine Motion Picture Herald felt that the film was "strictly one for the art houses", writing that it is "exciting and beautiful in part, but its quality is too uneven and its contrasts are not sufficiently abrupt to permit full appreciation of the story's moral." In an article on recent international releases, Life magazine briefly described the film as "beautiful to look at, although rather drawn out." Writing for Sight and Sound in 1950, Gavin Lambert claimed that the film's "magic was too deliberately tricked and artificial."

Legacy

Retrospective assessment

In the years following its release, critics came to regard Beauty and the Beast as a masterpiece of French cinema and a high point of Cocteau's career. In his 1970 book on the director, biographer Francis Steegmuller described it as "by general consent one of the most enchanting pictures ever made." Review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a "Certified Fresh" rating of 96% based on 67 reviews, with the consensus reading: "With its magical optical effects and enchanting performances, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast remains the most surreal—and soulful—of the fairy tale's film adaptations." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 92 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". In 1999, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a perfect score and called it "one of the most magical of all films," adding that its "devices penetrate the usual conventions of narrative, and appeal at a deeper psychic level."

https://www.villagevoice.com/simple-twists-of-fate/

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/belle-et-la-bete-la-review/

Writing for Senses of Cinema in 2020, Jeremy Carr praised the film enthusiastically, arguing that Cocteau's version stands "miles away from the prior and subsequent screen versions" and is best appreciated, as Cocteau himself intended, as "a work of simple, charming imagination."

Cultural influence

The film was the main cinematic influence on Jacques Demy's 1970 fairy-tale adaptation Donkey Skin, in which Marais was cast as the King as a nod to his role in Cocteau's film. He is dressed in similar robes, the castle echoes the Beast's, and in both films Marais's character embodies the "object of the heroine's transgressive desire." Donkey Skin also includes a direct quotation from Cocteau's own poetry, and at the end of both films the protagonist appears somewhat disappointed by her happy ending.

External links

• Media related to Beauty and the Beast (1946) at Wikimedia Commons