MUBI

“Beauty and the Beast” is a fascinating adaptation of the Leprince de Beaumont fairy tale that tweaks the story’s usual theme of love beyond appearance. In director Jean Cocteau’s sumptuous fantasy, the Beast’s appearance remains a constant hindrance to love throughout the story and Belle has difficulty looking beyond it. Disney’s version, the most familiar to this viewer, finds Belle learning to love the beast for his character and eventually growing to love his unique, but not too beastly, appearance. Cocteau has something else in mind and uses the fairy tale to examine traditional notions of beauty and love. Belle is not quite the heroine we expected and the Beast is not rewarded in the manner we assume.

Cocteau explains his intentions in a letter to American viewers:

“To fairyland as people usually see it, I would bring a kind of realism to banish the vague and misty nonsense now so completely outworn. My story would concern itself mainly with the unconscious obstinacy with which women pursue the same type of man, and expose the naiveté of the old fairy tales that would have us believe that this type reaches its ideal in conventional good looks. My aim would be to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that I summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: “And they had many children.”

I was therefore obliged to deceive both the public and Beauty herself. Slyly, and with much effort, I persuaded my cameraman Alekan to shoot Jean Marais, as the Prince in as saccharine a style as possible. The trick worked. When the picture was released, letters poured in from matrons, teen-age girls and children, complaining to me and Marais about the transformation. They mourned the disappearance of the Beast—the same Beast who terrified them so at the time when Madame Leprince de Beaumont wrote the tale."

So in “Beauty and the Beast,” Cocteau is trying to be subversive and unpack traditional notions of beauty. Belle, more inwardly and outwardly beautiful than her wicked sisters—see Goneril and Regan—still is none too saintly as to rise above an enslavement to the desire for the traditional prize catch. Given that fairy tales are about the attractive ensnaring the attractive—beauty is the result of good character and vice versa—Cocteau’s conclusion is likely to appear odd and unsatisfying after the first viewing. When Belle gets her handsome prince we are ill at ease and unsatisfied. I found it off-putting, but after reading Cocteau’s letter, reprinted in part above, I am fascinated. He was being a provocateur trying to destabilize the ideological underpinnings of the fairy tale and, necessarily, our own facile desires. The seeming purity of fairy tales is a sham and props up a superficial beauty ethic.

Yet “Beauty” succeeds as a traditional fairy tale until its closing moments. Belle is far kinder than her sisters and chooses to put herself at the mercy of the Beast when her sisters refuse out of vain self interest. She is pursued by a strapping traditional hero type unworthy of her attention and greedy. Her quest finds her remaining in the beast’s home, but more out of a desire to honor her father and out of respect and admiration, but not love, of the Beast. That this love never really materializes is confounding given our familiarity with the story. Cocteau is playing a devilish game.

When ever anyone enters the Beast’s estate, the straightforward sunny film becomes dark and dream-like. Time slows down and characters float across the screen. Candelabras are represented by human arms poking through walls clutching candlesticks. (An obvious inspiration to Lumiere, Ms. Potts, and crew.) The Beast costume is convincing and surprising given my expectation of 1946 special effects. The film, whether the viewer appreciates its rhetorical aims, is too beautiful to miss.

And what do we make of the ending? Belle finally gets her handsome prince, but not as we expected. When the Beast changes it does not feel triumphant, but tragic. The Beast proves to be the film’s most noble character and Belle a tragic figure for seeking out someone more palatable. Cocteau closes his film with a triumphant ascension to the heavens, but we feel loss and disappointment.

Is Cocteau successful in deconstructing our beauty ethic? It’s hard to say yes when he’s so clearly manipulating the audience, but it is a deft manipulation and done in a medium that honors beauty as a virtue. In the end it’s a beautiful experiment that needs to be experienced and unpacked. Don’t miss it.