Beauty and the Beast 1946
Jean Cocteau’s first full-length movie (he wrote and directed it) is perhaps the most sensuously elegant of all filmed fairy tales. As a child escapes from everyday family life to the magic of a storybook, so, in the film, Beauty’s farm, with its Vermeer simplicity, fades in intensity as we are caught up in the Gustave Dore extravagance of the Beast’s enchanted landscape. In Christian Berard’s makeup, Jean Marais is a magnificent Beast; Beauty’s self-sacrifice to him holds no more horror than a satisfying romantic fantasy should have. The transformation of the Beast into Prince Charming is ambiguous — what we have gained cannot quite take the place of what we have lost. (When shown the film, Greta Garbo is reported to have said at the end, “Give me back my Beast.”) The delicate Josette Day is, quite properly, Beauty.
Love that Garbo anecdote.
You need to RUN to the damn video store and get this puppy. This is a miracle of a film. It’s so moody, and so intense, and so magnificently filmed, it’s almost unsettling. Now, you talk about a fantasy film that fills all the requirements, THIS IS IT!!!!
One of the most beautiful parts here, is when Beauty must leave the Beast (after she has fallen for him) by putting on a magic glove, and re appearing at the home of her sisters and her dying Father. The look on her face as she vanishes is one of the most heartbreaking I’ve seen.
It has subtitles, and to listen to the gorgeous French coming out of everyone’s mouths is also refreshing. You know, Americans being basically morons, they CAN’T read the movie. So, usually foreign films end up getting dubbed by Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan.
Kill me now.
I won’t watch dubbed films. It’s too awful and cheesy. I rented Mephisto – which is a feckin’ GREAT film, but the voices were dubbed in so it nearly ruined it for me. I had to search out a subtitled version, because I just couldn’t enjoy the movie wihtout hearing the real actor’s voice, regardless of the language he spoke!!