Film Review
Release: 1946
Producer: Andre Paulve
Cinematographer: Henri Alekan
Editor: Claude Iberia
Scenario & Director: Jean Cocteau
Music: Georges Auric
Sound: J. Lebreton
Costume Designer: Christian Bérard
Cast: Jean Marais (Avenant, Beast, Prince), Josette Day (Belle), Marcel André (Belle's father)
Paris Premiere: January 1946
U.S. Release: January 15, 1948
At the end of World War II, when France was reeling from pain and exhaustion, Jean Marais suggested to Cocteau that a welcome diversion might be a film based on the famous 18th-century fable of Madame Leprince de Beaumont. Cocteau leaped at the idea, since it revived his own childhood fantasies and promised to introduce a new genre: fairy tale on film.
La Belle et la Bête, with Josette Day as Beauty and Jean Marais as the Beast, was the first film both written and directed by Cocteau since Le Sang d'un Poète. Although superficially different, the visual metaphors of both works deal with the raw stuff of myth—and create an atmosphere of eerie beauty. In La Belle et la Bête, Cocteau returned to his familiar stand, showing how hard it is to distinguish reality from fantasy.
Original posters from La Belle et la Bête and other classics
The film remains faithful in spirit to the 18th-century source, but through his inventions Cocteau made the picture unmistakably his own and provided a model for later filmmakers, such as Minnelli, Bergman, and Truffaut.
Casting "The Most Beautiful Man in the World" as the Beast who turns into Prince Charming was a real coup de théâtre. The candelabra fashioned of living arms and the smoke-breathing caryatids with moving eyes linger long in the mind. Magic talismans—a horse, a glove, a key, enchanted gardens—all abound in the film in satisfying profusion.
This iconography, as in many of Cocteau's enigmatic motion pictures, has provoked much learned dispute about its Surrealist or Jungian symbolism. For all that, La Belle et la Bête remains a moving children's story (nothing appeals to adults more) told in the language and images of a master of both arts.
Official UK DVD available now
Film Trivia
Once upon a time...
Greta Garbo is famously reported, on seeing Jean Cocteau's film La Belle et La Bête, as saying: "Give me back my Beast!"
The film is an adaptation of the 1757 story Beauty and the Beast, written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in her 40s. Originally, it was published as part of a fairy tale anthology.
A page of the original scenario of the film is on display at Cocteau's home in Milly-la-Forêt.
Mila Parély played Belle's elder sister. She also worked with famed directors Fritz Lang and Robert Bresson among others. She died in 2012 at the age of 94—surely the last tangible link to the film.
The exteriors were shot in the Château de la Roche Courbon (Indre-et-Loire).
The original trailer was directed and narrated by Cocteau himself.
After the war, film stock was inconsistent. More than once, Cocteau expressed a wish that the film was in colour.
It took Marais five hours to make up for the part of Beast—thirteen hours a day at the studio.
Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film is the must-have book for anyone interested in Cocteau's perceptions of the making of the film. The book details the day-to-day challenges and triumphs of creating this masterpiece.
Watching Marais and Day here, you would need 50 shades of melancholy.
In 1994, composer Philip Glass created an opera version—also called La Belle et la Bête—one of a "Cocteau Trilogy" of operas. While Glass is one of the great composers of the modern age, many purists feel that Auric's original soundtrack should never be replaced. Auric was La Belle et la Bête, and his work stands alone as one of the great film compositions.
Costume designer Christian Bérard's masterly costumes were executed by Escoffier and Castillo from the House of Paquin.
Marais was signing autographs in Parisian streets long before Beast was signing in the streets of Orlando.
This was released in the same year as that other marvel of fantastic fantasy, A Matter of Life and Death (UK), and the astonishing & timeless It's A Wonderful Life.
Reproduction worldwide film release posters at affordable prices
Blu-ray Edition
Format: Dolby, PAL
Language: French
Subtitles: English
Region: Region B/2
Number of discs: 1
Classification: PG
Studio: BFI
Blu-ray Release Date: 6 Aug. 2018
Run Time: 90 minutes
La Belle et la Bête is a landmark feat of cinematic fantasy in which master filmmaker Jean Cocteau conjures spectacular visions of enchantment, desire and death that have never been equalled.
Josette Day is luminous yet feisty as Beauty, and Jean Marais gives one of his best performances as the Beast, at once brutal and gentle, rapacious and vulnerable, shamed and repelled by his own bloodlust. Henri Alekan's subtle black and white cinematography combines with Christian Bérard's masterly costumes and set designs to create a magical piece of cinema, a children's fairy tale refashioned into a stylised and highly sophisticated dream.
The BFI is proud to present this world cinema classic in High Definition from the French 4K restoration.
Special Features
Newly presented in High Definition from the French 4K restoration
Feature commentary by cultural historian Sir Christopher Frayling
Des Rêves de Cocteau en numérique, l'aventure de la Belle et la Bête (2013, 51 mins)
Christian Bérard et Jean Cocteau, deux magiciens de spectacle (2013, 24 mins)
Deleted scenes (6 mins): film and audio clips from scenes that were not included in the final film
Original theatrical trailer
BFI trailer (2013)
Barbe Bleue (René Bertrand, 1938, 13 mins): an animated version of Perrault's Bluebeard
Stills gallery
Illustrated booklet with essays by Dr Deborah Allison, Marina Warner and George E Turner, and full film credits
'One of the most spellbinding fairy tales in all cinema' — The Times
'Absolute magic, diamond cold and lunar bright' — The Observer
Stunning 4K restoration with extensive special features
All images © Estate of Jean Cocteau