Jack-of-all Arts Jean Cocteau (gadfly dabbler to agnostics) made just a handful of feature films. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST/’46 the most popular while this update of the Orpheus myth usually considered his best. That’s debatable. Better to claim it as the most ‘Cocteau-ean, a Greatest Hits compilation. You know the basics: Lyric poet Orpheus/Orphée (Jean Marais) loses beloved wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) to Death (here Princess of Death Maria Casares), but wiles his way across the River Styx to bring her back to the living IF he can keep from looking at her till they’ve safely returned. Usually things don’t end well. (Here, more have your cake and eat it, too.) Cocteau has devilish fun updating visual aspects; those motorcyclist Death Aides a leather fetishistic delight. But too often he settles for vamping before plunging into his simple signature, clear-eyed F/X (mirrors of water to step into; Upside-Down Anti-Gravity tricks, reverse motion to wake the dead) and not one but two of his lovers in the same film.* The good stuff (those effects) are tight & tidy as ever (even tv’s BATMAN picked up on one), while important themes in ethics, decor, æsthetics, poetry & eternal love sound hollow when tapped. Philosophical metaphysics 101. Head- scratching surrealism and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST's sturdy emotionalism were more satisfying as film. Even George Auric’s score falls back on Gluck’s operatic masterpiece for something memorable. (The built-in distancing of opera or ballet a better match for this story.) Still essential, but time has taken its toll.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *In his mid-30s, Jean Marais’s big, square, noble head certainly fit for The Classics, but Roman rather than Greek. At 25, Edouard Dermithe’s Cégeste is the one to model for a Greek bust. Cocteau covering all bases.
No comments:
Post a Comment