Sadly, I haven’t seen any Cocteau yet but I’m trying to make my way through my netflix queue to get to him. Would you suggest I watch his films in any particular order?
Cocteau is pure cinema. Very powerful imagery with a sense of wonder that puts all Hollywood fantasy to shame.
Cocteau’s films are great, especially Orphee and Beauty And The Beast. Truly, his films are “art on film.”
I just finished beauty and the beast, blood of a poet, and orpheus. I don’t really like him all that much. I get the sense I’m watching a dabbler in film when I see his movies, which he described himself as being. By “dabbler” I mean good movies made by someone who wasn’t really immersed in the field.
Blood of a Poet I thought was enlivening, I could feel Cocteau’s excitement, but overall it felt a little juvenile to me. Orpheus more mature, but stuck on the same themes. Testament of Orpheus I hear is basically Cocteau walking through a rehash of all his work.
His ideas didn’t really seem grow or change throughout his career. And also he seems to only be interested in commenting about art, which I, being a miserable git, don’t find interesting at all.
>>Cocteau’s name doesn’t seem to crop up much in these threads and I am curious as to how he is regarded.<<
Gee, Howard, sometimes I think it’s a rare post where I don’t mention LA BELLE ET LA BETE or ORPHEE.
BELLE is perhaps the most perfect film ever made & ORPHEE is brimming with wonderful invention at translating Greek myth into (then) present day. (Those motorcycle angels of death are scarier than hell.)
>>he certainly contributed to Melville’s wonderful film version of Cocteau’s book “Les Enfants Terribles.” At the very least with his narration.<<
One I haven’t seen, but am I remembering correctly that he slavaged what became the final shot of the film by imnprovising a narration about the caravan moving on to cover a camera wobble?
I suspect that he is not talked about much in vcarious film discussion groups because he was primarily a poet (though I can’t think of any art form that he didn’t investigate at some point) and was only deeply involved in film for a relatively short time that covered the beginning of his affair with Jean Marais (if Cocteau was going to spend time with him, he had to get into film – they met when Marais did one of Cocteau’s plays, but Marais wanted to be a movie star). And so many are unavailable in the US – I’d love to see THE EAGLE WITH TWO HEADS.
Scooter – Definitely check out LA BELLE ET LA BETE first. While there are surrealistic touches, it depends far less on surrealism than some of the others.
Recently went to a screening of Truffaut’s “Mississippi Mermaid” and Arnaud Desplechin introduced it. He mentioned that the only person Hitchcock was jealous of was Cocteau. Whenever he’d speak with Truffaut, he’d ask him if Cocteau had many any new films. I think that is a good enough reason to start watching his films. “La Belle et La Bete” is the most beautiful film ever made, in my opinion.
I’ve only seen Beauty and the Beast. I love Cocteau’s imagery. The scene where she’s gliding across the floor, as if floating on air, was emulated by Spike Lee in a couple of his films. I think Beauty and the Beast is where Disney got it’s ideas for the Haunted Mansion.
Thanks Harry, looking forward to it
Harry, the camera wobble was in “Les Parents Terrible.” I would agree with you that the best intro is with “La Belle Et La Bete,” in part because it is so accessible, along with being utterly exquisite. Sorry I didn’t catch your references in the past to Cocteau’s films. I think that, as a topic of discussion, we have never focussed on him. He may be mentioned in lists but rarely discussed in detail. I understand how he can be perceived as a dilettante. He had so many ways of expressing himself. And his subject matter was mostly about dreams and the underworld and not so much about day to day realities. He even lifted real situations into a kind of poetic fantasy.
Cocteau was one of a kind. He was perhaps the greatest, warmest, sharpest conversationalist who ever lived — see his interviews. He wasn’t a dabbler, that’s a mistake. He was simply overflowing with creative ideas but didn’t feel the need to make a religion out of any one art form. His art is typified by deceptively simple line drawings that merge ancient cave doodles with Piccaso and Matisse high modernism.
And he is obsessive and personal enough. If there’s a more beautiful moment than the one in which the black angel comes to collect the soul of the boy who has been killed in a snowball fight (an autobiographical reference to a real snowball fight from Cocteau’s childhood), I don’t know what it is. Likewise, The Testmanent of Orpheus says everything you could ever hope to say about the race between immortality and mortality at the end of an artist’s life.
His imagination was more buoyant and less devilish than that of the other surrealists in his day, even Bunuel/Dali. His films fill one with the absolute wonder of the movies’ power of illusion and imagination, and literally open doors of anarchy and liberation in the mind. I love him.
The 1st time I saw Orpheus in 1982 was a major revelation in cinema for me, and it still haunts me with its possibilities for cinema, a great deal of which still remains to be explored in all his films—no wonder he was only director Hitchcock may have envied.
Cocteau is an incredibly important filmmaker. “Beauty and the beast” was made without any of the “special effects” resources we ahev today, but it’s STILL ahead of its time because of Cocteau’s most important resource — genius.
“Les Parents Terribles” is deserving of especially close study. And there’s a very special place in my heart for “Le Testament d’Orphee.”
Among Coceau-realted (but not directed) movies the most important is Melville’s “Les Enfants Terribles.” Franju’s “Thomas L’’Imposteur” isn’t as well-known as it should be. He wirte the dialogue for Bressons’s “Les Dames du Bois de boulogne,” and his adaptation of “The Princess of Cleves” for Marcel Carne is quite good.
Are any of his films available besides The Orphic Trilogy and Beauty and the Beast?
Howard Fritzson
Cocteau’s name doesn’t seem to crop up much in these threads and I am curious as to how he is regarded. I think “Beauty And The Beast,” “Orphée” and “Les Parents Terribles” are brilliant films and he certainly contributed to Melville’s wonderful film version of Cocteau’s book “Les Enfants Terribles.” At the very least with his narration.
His early “The Blood of a Poet” is hard to forget. He was a fine director of actors: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Michel Auclair in “Beauty,”
Marais, François Périer and (spectacularly) María Casares in “Orphée” and just about everyone in “Les Parents.”