Filmmaker, poet, writer and artist Jean Cocteau’s peerless take on Beauty and the Beast, which he directed with the uncredited help of René Clément (Wages of Fear, Plein Soleil), is a triumph of cinema.
Beauty gives herself to the Beast in order to save her father and through their growing love transforms him into a handsome prince. Melding the power of fairy tale with some of the most extraordinary images in cinema Cocteau creates a gorgeous hallucinatory melodrama.
The extraordinary effects, a trademark of Cocteau and a key mechanism for how his work accesses the unconscious, echo those of his own earlier Blood of a Poet and later Orpheus.
The directory of photography, Henri Alekan, who also shot Wings of Desire and Roman Holiday among many other notable films, frequently spoke of this as the high point of his career. It’s easy to see why in this beautiful restoration of a timeless classic.