Review of La Belle et la Bête

While often familiar with the Disney animation, few viewers are aware of Beauty and the Beast’s film influence. The actual folktale that we are familiar with as children and adults was first recorded by Madame Villeneuve in France in the mid-18^th century. Its modern incarnation was written and directed by the French artist, Jean Cocteau. It remains to this day one of the definitive film renditions of the story.

La Belle et la Bête was produced when France was still reeling from the world war. According to Cocteau, the only thing harder to come by than undamaged film was clean, unpatched bedsheets. “Shoe-string” didn’t even begin to describe the budget. It’s therefore surprising that despite these limitations, the film still holds up over sixty years later. Much of this can be attributed to the surrealist techniques of Cocteau, who pushed the medium to its limits.

The story remains relatively faithful to Villeneuve’s version: a merchant (Marcel André) hard on his luck goes to town in high hopes of profit from his ships only to leave empty-handed. On his return home, he gets caught up in a storm and ends up on the doorstep of a wealthy estate owner. Although the owner is no where to be found, the merchant finds a table prepared for him with food and wine. Eventually, the long day and food gets the better of him and he drifts to sleep.

After waking up the next morning, the merchant prepares to leave only to remember that he promised his daughters gifts. Unwilling to take any valuables from the mansion, the merchant decides to pluck a rose for his youngest: Belle (Josette Day). This act incites the rage of the owner of the estate: the Beast (Jean Marais). In exchange for his life, the merchant offers one of his daughters to the Beast. Only one daughter is willing to go: Belle.

Initially repulsed by the Beast, Belle slowly comes to accept and care about him. She begs him to let her see her father once more. The Beast relents, although he warns her that if she doesn’t return, he will die. Upon her return, one of Belle’s former suitors, Avenant (Jean Marais, again) decides to hunt the Beast down to “save” her from it. The two characters being played by the same actor is no coincidence.

When Disney made the animated film, he neutered a number of key elements in the original story in favor a traditional morality and romance tale. Cocteau, however, retains some of the more uncomfortable facets of what proves to be less of a children’s bedtime story than a psychological parable about sex relations.

Historically kept in the dark about sex, women often had a difficult time coming to terms with the demands of a wedding night. Many, understandably, saw male behavior as bestial. In saying, “Love can make a man into a beast and a beast into a man,” Cocteau notes that Avenant’s desire for Belle brings the monster out of him while the Beast’s love for her softens his heart. It’s perhaps a commentary on the dual nature of men when Jean Marais’ characters transform into each other in the end.

The is another element in La Belle et la Bête that is distinctly Cocteau: the temple to Diana on the Beast’s estate. At first it seems odd that he would include Roman mythology into a French fairytale. Yet those that remember the myth of Diana will recall that she was the goddess of beasts and the hunt, shunning all male contact. One day when a Prince named Actaeon spied on Diana bathing, she turned him into a stag and set his own dogs upon him. Suddenly the shots of mauled deer and the countless dog statues in the film make more sense. Cocteau accurately observed that the elements of the Beauty and Beast tale date back much further than we usually think.

The reason why the film still resonates to this day is partly due to the director’s experimental techniques. Cocteau was fascinated by time and the effects that film had on it. There are a number of home videos made by Cocteau that experiment with filming people performing an action backwards and then playing the film itself backwards to make them appear to accomplish impossible tasks in forward-motion. The scene with the candelabras held by disembodied arms lighting one by one as Belle’s father walks along the hallway was done by reversing the candlebras being blown out one-by-one as Marcel André walked backwards.

The Criterion edition of the film has been digitally restored and has alternative audio tracks that include an opera written by Phillip Glass that is timed to the original movie. The quality of the music updates Cocteau’s film a great deal. La Belle et la Bête is essential viewing to anyone who thought the Disney film was great as a kid.