Word: cocteau
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...reply from musicians? Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll! At least for them. "If it's not your bag, don't get into it," says Robinson of the Black Crowes. "((But)) would ((French writer)) Jean Cocteau have been as good if he hadn't been an opium addict?" Maybe not. Then again, he might have been better...
...reconnecting with his own African inheritance. He was not the first "provincial" to discover in Paris a means of using his local identity; he took what he needed (not only from Picasso but also from Max Ernst and much lesser figures like Hans Bellmer, and even from Jean Cocteau's hypermannered / line drawings) to find what he was. Lam's version of Cubism was more illustrative than Picasso's. The figures in his best-known painting, The Jungle, 1943, are like renderings of sculpture standing in a space deduced from Cezanne...
...first part of the film, which takes place on the farm where Beauty's family lives, is a tribute to the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. Cocteau achieves a heightened sense of realism through careful composition and austere lighting. He presents a vision of simplicity and common sense, the antithesis of the world inside the palace of the Beast, where fantasy reigns supreme. There, candelabra are held by human hands protruding from the walls, a magical mirror contains the visage of a beloved and an enchanted white steed roams the halls. The palace in the midst of the dark woods...
Their hesitant courtship becomes an exquisite pas de deux between Josette Day and Jean Marais. Cocteau was blessed to have two such accomplished actors playing the lead roles. Day, with her delicate cheekbones and tremulous lovliness, is radiant; the other-wordly image of Beauty in a dark cloak stays in one's memory for days. Marais is triumphant as the Beast. In Berard's makeup and ornate costumes, he displays a flair not present in any of his other performances. He looks at once noble and ridiculous, menacing and silly, and his resonant, incantatory voice is unforgettable...
...Cocteau's movie is the sort of dream you would have if you fell asleep with your head on a deluxe illustrated edition of Grimm's tales. It is perhaps the most sumptuous and satisfying version of a fairy tale ever put on celluloid, candy for the eyes and a banquet for the aesthete. Above all, it is a swooningly romantic film graced with many visual miracles. And, like love, "Beauty and the Beast" is a dream from which you never want to wake...