It’s a magnificent fable of love and identity set a couple of hundred years ago in rural France. A merchant (Marcel André) lives with his son Ludovic (Michel Auclair) and his three daughters. The two eldest, Félicie (Mila Parély) and Adélaïde (Nane Germon) are selfish and vain, and they exploit their sister Belle (Josette Day) as their servant.
One day the father becomes lost in the nearby forest and comes across a strange castle. He takes advantage of the garden and plucks a rose (something Belle had always wanted), but the castle’s owner suddenly appears and he’s none to happy. He’s half human-half animal (lion-esque) and he possesses magical powers.
The furry fanged beast (Jean Marais) condemns the man to death unless he gives up one of his daughters. The man gives him his word and the beast gives him directions out of the forest. Later after he explains his ordeal to his family Belle sacrifices her freedom and goes to the castle. She becomes the beast’s prisoner. But the beast turns out to be more compassionate and genuine than Belle’s suitor, Avenant (Jean Marais). The beast is grotesque on the outside, but beautiful on the inside.
The beast wants Belle’s hand in marriage, but she steadfastly refuses. Avenant, along with Belle’s brother, find the castle with the intent of rescuing Belle and killing the beast, but, in perfect fairy-tale fashion there’s a twist of fate that turns everything upside down and inside out.
Jean Cocteau would go on to make one of the finest examples of surrealist drama with Orphée (1949), which was based on the myth of Orpheus who travels down into Hades to confront Death and ressurect his wife Eurydice. Beauty and the Beast isn’t as surreal as the latter work, but it does possess some truly sublime moments of ethereal beauty and magic realism. It’s all a phantasmogorical tale that delves deep into the heart of what it is to love and be loved, to reject and accept, regardless of what you look like.
Drenched in melancholy, yet it transcends its inherent sadness, and at film’s end takes flight into the misty ether of unconditional love, Beauty and the Beast is a cinematic creature that belies its theatrical trappings and embraces the visual artifice of film with wit and wonder.
The production design is classic, yet unique, the monochromatic cinematography is luminous and poetic. The special effects, including clever use of film in reverse, and smoke wafting out from the beast as he smolders in contempt, is novel, while the bestial facial prosthetic make-up is fantastic.
Jean Marais and Josette Day command the screen as the two leads. The subtleties and nuances of their performances give the film a richness that shines beyond the black and white veneer. The French dialogue adds a further exotic appeal.
Beauty and the Beast is a wondrous work of cinema, a classic fairy-tale told with a poet’s conviction and painterly eye; essential viewing for anyone who loves to escape into the fable realm of make-believe where virtue floats and conceit is defeated. If only more filmmakers approached cinema with the same sense of unbridled imagination as Jean Cocteau the world would be a better place (... perhaps Guillermo del Toro is not too far off).
A roar to the beast within us all; cry hard for true love, and pierce the mirror of narcissism, you’ll see your soul reflected back between the cracks … the pleasure of the perverse, spellbound by the black and white magic.
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