Happy Birthday, Jean Cocteau! Born today in 1889 as Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau, this French designer, critic, poet, visual artist, novelist, playwright and filmmaker was an enormously influential French artist and writer known as one of the major figures of Dada and Surrealism.
Educated at the Lycee Condorcet, he became infatuated with another boy, Pierre Dargelos; their relationship was never consummated, and Pierre's ghost often haunted Cocteau's later adult work, his image embodying recurring themes of longing and solitude.
Among his credits as a filmmaker, Cocteau is best known for writing and directing the 1946 French black and white fantasy/fairy tale film 'La Belle et la Bête' ('Beauty and the Beast'). Today, the film is now recognized as a classic of French cinema.
French film director and screenwriter Rene Clément ('Forbidden Games') served as "technical director". However, he went uncredited.
The film tells the story of a gentle-hearted Beast (Jean Marais) who is in love with the simple and beautiful girl Belle (Josette Day).
She is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief.
However, she is unable to return the key on time, but it is revealed that the Beast is the genuinely handsome prince (also Marais). A simple tale of tragic love that turns into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty.
As Cocteau wrote, "My goal was to make Beast so human, so likable, so superior to man that his transformation into Prince Charming would be for Belle, a terrible disappointment, and would oblige her to accept a marriage of reason."
Greta Garbo attended a screening of 'Beauty and the Beast' and reportedly cried out, "Give me back my beast!" after the transformation.
The film was an adaptation of French author Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1740 fairy tale fiction La Belle et la Bête.
The film was later nominated for the Grand Prize of the Festival for Feature Film (Jean Cocteau) at the 1st Cannes Film Festival. However, it did not win.
Four years later, Cocteau wrote and directed the second film of which he is best known. This was the 1950 French black and white fantasy/drama film 'Orpheus'. It is the central part and second installment of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy.
At the Café des Poètes in Paris, a fight breaks out between the poet Orphée (Jean Marais) and a group of resentful upstarts.
A rival poet, Jacques Cègeste (Edouard Dermithe), is killed, and a mysterious princess (María Casares) insists on taking Orpheus and the body away in her Rolls-Royce.
Orphée soon finds himself in the underworld, where the Princess announces that she is, in fact, Death.
Orpheus escapes in the car back to the land of the living, only to become obsessed with the car radio.
Cocteau is also known for directing the other two installments in his Orphic Trilogy.
These included the 1930 French black and white avant-garde experimental film 'Le sang d'un poète' ('The Blood of a Poet') and the 1960 French black and white fantasy/experimental film 'Le testament d'Orphée' ('Testament of Orpheus').
The latter was the last feature by Cocteau, of which also had a few seconds of color film spliced in.
Cocteau insisted on calling himself a poet, classifying the great variety of his works – poems, novels, plays, essays, drawings, films – as "poésie", "poésie de roman", "poésie de thêatre", "poésie critique", "poésie graphique" and "poésie cinématographique".
A regular member of the avant-garde, he maintained long-term friendships with artists such as Pablo Picasso, American visual artist Man Ray, Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist Tristan Tzara and French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist Francis Picabia.
“The job of the poet (a job which can't be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force,” Cocteau once mused.
The self-taught Cocteau would regularly draw his friends and acquaintances in a distinctive, fluid style informed by his interests in Cubism, psychoanalysis, and Catholicism.
“Poets don't draw,” he once quipped about his artworks. “They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.”
Throughout his life, Cocteau craved acceptance and recognition, and seemed to be constantly striving to remain at the forefront of Parisian culture.
With an oeuvre that spanned painting, novels, poetry, plays, and films, Cocteau established himself as a leading creative force in Paris.
Cocteau also said, "The uglier we grow with age, the more beautiful our work must become, reflecting us like a child that takes after its parents."
He was described as "one of [the] avant-garde's most successful and influential filmmakers" by the online guide service website AllMovie.
Chicago-based writer Jason Ankeny wrote: "More than simply one of avant-garde's most successful and influential filmmakers, Cocteau ranked among the century's most diversely talented artists, also enjoying success as an accomplished poet, novelist, and illustrator."
The most notable adaptations and homages of the film of the 20th century include the CBS American fantasy-drama romance television series Beauty and the Beast (1987–1990) and Disney's 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film 'Beauty and the Beast'.
In 1999, Roger Ebert added 'Beauty and the Beast' to his The Great Movies list, calling it "one of the most magical of all films" and a "fantasy alive with trick shots and astonishing effects, giving us a Beast who is lonely like a man and misunderstood like an animal."
A 2002 Village Voice review found the film's "visual opulence" "both appealing and problematic", writing "Full of baroque interiors, elegant costumes, and overwrought jewelry (even tears turn to diamonds), the film is all surface, and undermines its own don't-trust-a-pretty-face and anti-greed themes at every turn."
On the 2009 list of TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time, the episode Orphans (S02E12) from Beauty and the Beast ranked in at #89. It had aired on March 6, 1989.
In 2010, Cocteau's 'Beauty and the Beast' was ranked #26 in Empire magazine's "100 Best Films of World Cinema".
Of the 2010s, the most notable adaptation and homage was the 2017 American live-action musical romantic fantasy family film 'Beauty and the Beast'.
Cocteau had been active from 1908–1963.
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