Ah that old story. A beautiful young woman takes her father’s place when an animalistic monster demands payment for a clipped rose. Said monster is an enchanted human prince, and he needs the love of a good woman to break his curse. His house is enchanted with a lot of seemingly living things all over the dang place, and the hunky hunter back home just wants to rescue the young woman, aptly named “Beauty” from the monster so she can marry him. Yeah, that’s how Disney told that story.
It’s also how writer/director Jean Cocteau told the story in a live action French movie in 1946.
Cocteau’s adaptation sets the tone immediately in two ways. The first is a few of the names in the opening credits are written in chalk on a blackboard and then erased, and the second is a block of text asking the audience of (presumably) adults to accept what they are about to see the same way that children do, accepting they are told as something that could very well happen and leave it at that. Then he starts the film with “Once upon a time,” and we’re off to the races, so to speak. Cocteau’s adaptation is probably from here closer to the Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont story published in 1757, so that means a few fairly tale elements that Disney omitted are on full display in the form of Beauty’s (Josette Day) two awful sisters (Mila Parély and Nane Germon) who seem to refuse to believe they are financially poor thanks to their merchant father’s (Marcel André) loss of multiple ships at sea. There’s also a dimwitted brother Ludovic (Michel Auclair) who likes hanging out with his hunter buddy Avenant (Jean Marais).
However, Beauty’s father loses his way one night and finds himself in an enchanted castle where arms that jut out of the walls light his way with candles that flame on and off as he approaches and also pour his drinks. Seeing no one and getting no responses when he calls, the old man picks a rose as Beauty had asked for, incurring the wrath of a monstrous, cat-like person, the Beast (also Marais). Unless one of the father’s three daughters will agree to take his place, the Beast will kill the man. The story is fairly familiar from there: Beauty takes his place, and Beast needs her to fall in love with him, something that becomes a bit easy as time goes on since the Beast has a gentle soul when he isn’t giving off smoke or running off to kill a deer with his bare hands. Will Beast’s curse be lifted? Can Beauty love him?
So, this is an old and largely familiar story, and it isn’t hard to see how much it might have influenced Disney down the line. I am unfamiliar with the original story, but the general appearance of the Beast, in rather impressive make-up for 1946, to say nothing of some of his more animalistic characteristics, both seem awfully familiar, to say nothing of the enchanted castle’s living ornaments, seen mostly as those weird arms holding things while jutting from various surfaces or statues that sometimes look around. That said, none of these things talk, and the “Gaston” of the story is a bit nicer when all is said and done. He and Beauty did have something of a thing going, or at least he was proposing marriage and she was turning him down not so much because she hated him but more like she didn’t love him in quite the right way, and his response to the Beast was more of a concerned or spurned lover than some vainglorious fool. There’s also a bit of greed, but that comes more from Beauty’s three siblings than it does from Avenant, and it is a nice touch to see Marais playing both Avenant and the Beast.
But I had heard this movie was beloved due to its dreamlike tone and appearance, and that is very much the case. The interior’s of Beast’s castle are often full of shadows, no doubt due to minimal sets, but what is seen are things like the arms and the moving statues, things that characters like Beauty and her father see, notice a bit, but ultimately are only mildly afraid of. The Beast is another story for both characters, but Beauty’s fear of the Beast doesn’t last long (the movie is only a little over an hour and a half), and Cocteau’s use of basic special effects, many accomplished with make-up, lighting, and the occasional reversed shot, all make for a whimsical movie, one where good people are rewarded, and the bad are punished though none fatally. It’s a classic for a reason, and it tells the same story Disney told on a much smaller scale, and arguably, told it much better too.
Grade: A
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