Jean Cocteau (1946)
I think I must like the idea more than the experience of Jean Cocteau’s famous film. I’d seen it twice before but I didn’t enjoy it this third time and I remembered only a few images from previous viewings. That shows how little I appreciate them because the visual and aural marvels of La belle et la bête are many: the Beast’s head and eyes (even if the little moving ears are somehow daft); his lapping water as he tries to slake his huge, unquenchable thirst; his scuttling away from Belle and the camera before he dematerialises in the middle distance; the mysterious and benign human faces of the statues and fittings in the Beast’s castle; the transformation of objects according to who’s touching or wearing them; the costumes and the sensuous movement of the costumes; the lovers’ final apotheosis. The production design was by Christian Bérard and Lucien Carré, the costumes by Antonio Castillo and Marcel Escoffier. La belle et la bête, photographed by Henri Alekan, has a look which is unique. I don’t remember being so struck before by how strongly Freudian a tale this is. The motherless Belle and her ridiculous sisters may not have an Electra complex but their father is decidedly possessive of his youngest daughter and she seems compliant. Her choice of a gift for her father to bring home is a symbol of virginity; it’s in the moment of stealing the rose for Belle that the father is apprehended by the Beast. The theme is magnified in this telling of the story by the fact that Belle’s brother’s friend, who works on the father’s farm and who proposes marriage to Belle, is called Avenant: although the French adjective ‘avenant’ means likeable, it naturally connotes ‘avenir’ too – so that Avenant is also ‘the coming man’. The connection between this domestic threat to the father-daughter relationship and the one in the Beast’s castle is sealed by Cocteau’s casting of Jean Marais as both Avenant and the Beast.
Why didn’t I enjoy it? Josette Day’s Belle should be refreshingly different: both in looks and spirit, she’s far from the submissive ingénue you expect the character to be. But I found her increasingly bossy rather than feisty – and the vocal rhythms of both her and Marais as the Beast unvarying. The naturally leonine Marais, Cocteau’s muse and partner, makes a fine image and his eyes are expressive but he’s otherwise a limited actor. A little of the broad comedy at the family home went a long way with me. So too did the choirs that accompany, and get in the way, of Georges Auric’s music. The finale is emotionally unsatisfying in more ways than one. Cocteau seems to recognise that the doublet-and-hosed mannequin into which the Beast is transformed is an anti-climax: Prince Ardent, as he’s called, remarks to Belle that she seems disappointed by his metamorphosis. But it’s jarring too when Avenant, who – at least as played by Marais – seemed a nice chap, is turned into a Beast as a punishment. I liked the opening credits, written and wiped from a blackboard. I wasn’t so keen on the knowingness of Cocteau’s prologue text about children’s belief in fairytales. With Marcel André, who’s good as Belle’s father; Mira Parély (Jean Marais’s other half before he began his life with Cocteau) and Nane Germon as the sisters; and Michel Auclair as their brother.
22 January 2014
