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La belle et la bête (French version)
Location
Main screening room
Date
July 16th, 2022
Duration
96 min
Cycle
The essentials

Making lists is an activity moviegoers are fond of. Every year, the same ritual: compilation of the ten best films, with comparative analyses, debates, heated discussions. But what about the ultimate list of the most outstanding films in the history of cinema? That is to say, those films that must be seen, those that have forever transformed the art of cinema, but also our way of seeing a culture, of understanding the world as well as our own lives? This program aims to tackle this challenge with nearly eighty films, produced between 1916 and 1960, while waiting for your lists!

Beauty and the Beast
Directed by
Jean Cocteau
Language
French version
Actors
Jean Marais, Josette Day, Michel Auclair
Origins
France
Year
1946
Duration
96 min
Genre
Drama, fantasy
Format
Digital
Synopsis

When Belle's father returns from a trip, he gets lost and finds refuge in a strange castle. The next day, he picks the rose he had promised his daughter, not knowing that it is the Beast's garden. Irritated, the Beast offers him to exchange one of his daughters for his life. To save her father, Belle accepts the deal...

Beauty and the Beast
Awards

Jean Cocteau

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist movements; and one of the most influential figures in early 20th-century art as a whole. He is best known for his novels Le Grand Écart (1923), Le Livre Blanc (1928), and Les Enfants Terribles (1929); the stage plays La Voix Humaine (1930), La Machine Infernale (1934), Les Parents terribles (1938), La Machine à écrire (1941), and L'Aigle à deux têtes (1946); and the films The Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1950), and Testament of Orpheus (1960), which alongside Blood of a Poet and Orpheus constitute the so-called Orphic Trilogy.

(Wikipedia)

Explore

Cocteau's most popular and underrated film is simply unique. Its imagery of wonder is an enchantment from beginning to end. It allows us to talk about fear, a strange fear, born in large part from Jean Marais' makeup. One can interpret the myth in a kind and accessible way as Walt Disney did. But we can also confront a vision in which the Beast, the different, deformed, ugly being, can be saved by a true look of love.
Pierre Pageau
2005
La Belle et la Bête de Jean Cocteau - Excerpt (in french)
About La belle et la bête
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Adaptations and homages
About Jean Cocteau
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