Beauty and the Beast
Dir: Jean Cocteau,
Rene Clement (uncred.)
Prod: Andre Paulve
Scr: Jean Cocteau
Pho: Henri Alekan
Premiered Sept. 25,
1946
Seen at the Flick,
Denver, 1977
I was first pulled effortlessly into the dream world of
cinema when my mother plonked me down in front of our dingy old black-and-white
television and tuned in to Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film Beauty and the Beast.
Mom was intellectually precocious, culturally aware, and
lonely, moored in suburbia. I think she was trying to raise three little
friends rather than three children. She was a voracious reader, and we made
regular pit stops to the local library. Music, books, movies, all were
available in our home, with very little filtering — and no subject was off the
table.
She was a fan of the “great films” series that ran on public
television during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and as we only had the one set,
we kids all ended up watching Ivan the
Terrible, Part 1 and Grand Illusion
and Seven Samurai and stuff like
that. This had the effect of turning into de facto film critics, and scarred us
for life to boot. Gratis. Hey, if you’re 10 and you watch Fires on the Plain, something in you breaks way too early.
It’s tough for me to overstate how influential this film
was. It has an emotive power that drew me in, made me forget about anything
else. Even via that dinky set, I was sucked into the movie.
It’s a fairy tale of course, but it’s a fairy tale full of
fire and meaning, enacted so convincingly that even the most fantastic moments
seem natural, the logical outcome of what has gone before. Cocteau and his
creative team trapped magic inside the camera.
It is derived from the fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince
de Beaumont (1711-1780). The story is the traditional one, containing two vain
and spiteful older sisters (the hilarious Mila Parely and Nane Germon) and
Belle (Josette Day), guileless and kind. When their father, an unfortunate
merchant (Marcel Andre), is forced to cross a forest dark with night, he
stumbles on an enchanted castle. In plucking a rose, he summons the wrath of
the Beast (Jean Marais), who demands that he forfeit his life or that of one of
his daughters.
Cocteau uses all the cinematic trickery at his disposal. A
double row of candelabras, held by disembodied arms, light themselves and point
the way. Decorative sculptures observe, blow smoke. A disembodied hand serves
wine. The rich scenic design of Christian Berard and Lucien Carre was modeled
on the engravings of Gustav Dore and the paintings of Jan Vermeer, and it
delineates the story with unerring accuracy.
Belle, of course, takes her father’s place. In the Beast’s
domain, he is a loving servant to her, though he’s compelled to stalk and kill
game in the night. (His fingers smoke with the blood of his victims.) Belle
pities him, but steadfastly refuses his nightly request to marry him.
The Beast is a classic romantic anti-hero – possessed of power,
but cursed and stricken with melancholy. He is by far better than Belle’s
wastrel brother Ludovic (Michel Auclair) and his pal and Belle’s would-be
lover, the “good-for-nothing” Avenant (Marais again, out of Beast mode and
staggeringly handsome). Gradually, Belle sees through the Beast’s appearance
and grows fond of him. When she is given leave to visit her family, the Beast
wastes away in unhappy isolation. Can she return in time to save him?
The second time I saw the film, I was at The Flick. This was
a tiny but delightful, ritzy two-screen art house at the corner of 15th and
Larimer in Denver. Besides a couple of other repertory houses, the Flick was
the only place where obscure, foreign, and avant-garde cinema was shown at the
time. (It seems like Rene Laloux’s Fantastic
Planet was always playing there.) It’s the only movie theater I can think
of that I dressed up to attend. Films there were events, to be mulled over and debated later at the nearby all-night coffee shop.
The Flick’s tiny lobby was punctuated by a steep, narrow
stair that led to the auditoriums, if that’s what you would call them. Each
held a few dozen comfortable seats, and the décor was Empire style. It was the
perfect place to watch a film — cozy and relaxing.
I made the mistake of taking a high-school date there to see
Beauty and the Beast. It was someone
I was interested in who did not reciprocate. (Then why did she go out with me?)
At this stage in my love life, I was needy and intense, the worst possible
combination. “Let’s just be friends,” she said as I tried to hold her hand
before the show. Ironically, it’s a statement Belle would later make as we
watched the film. I felt rejected and beastly myself.
You can tell whether a relationship is going somewhere by
how easy it is to talk movies after the show. The film failed to impress her,
and I took her home as fast as I could. There was nothing to discuss.
But the movie resounded in my mind. I was more convinced
than ever of its primacy. I was also certain that I would never ask out a
non-film buff to a movie ever again. And I didn’t.
