SCREENING - BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Notes from class:
1)Filming started 4 months after German surrender.
2)There were deprivations during this time - filmed in B&W
he wanted to film it in color.
3)B&W shows "its careful distinction between a deceptively sunny ordinary reality
and the Beast's domain of night."
4)The background harshness is perceptible in other ways...sentence not finished.
5)The storybook setting of a 17th century farmhouse which is introduced as "once upon a time,"
is revealed within moments as a place of vanity and venality, cowardice and petty-minded squabbling,
slaps and insults.
6)It's a fallen world.
7)Belle is withdrawn in hermetic suffering due to the meanness of her elder sisters.
8)Her brothers are opportunistic.
9)Her father is morally weak.
10)Avenant her suitor is handsome and empty.
11)The hellishness of this "pictorially elegant but unmagical reality.
12)It's all getting worse with the creditors and moneylenders coming after the father.
14)This does make is seem like there will be no "happy ever after."
15)It's an oppressive world that Belle and her father inhabit.
16)Cocteau makes it seem more crazy with the passageways in and out of the Beast's house
17)The route into the Beast's house one goes through a misty forest, up a deserted staircase,
through a great door, down the hall of human arms extending candelabra with flames.
18)All done in other worldly camera movements.
19)It was shot by his assistant, Rene Clement - filming the action backward.
20)The result is that we're passed through some ordinary, invisible portal.
Cocteau "had a poet’s hard-earned mistrust of the merely atmospheric, decorative vagueness misnamed “poetic”: “My method,” he wrote at the outset of his journal of the shooting of Beauty and the Beast,“is simple: not to aim at poetry. That must come of its own accord. The mere whispered mention of its name frightens it away.”
Notes: The result - the film has been praised as lyrical - ethereal - gorgeous - a triumph of the
imagination. It may also be accurately described as tough-minded, down to earth, ferociously
unsentimental.
Why: "the air of fantastic is governed by laws, laws that may be difficult to explain but it is caught up in laws - difficult to explain, "Fantasy has its own laws, which are like those of perspective. You may not bring what is distant into the foreground nor render fuzzily what is near."
- Geoffrey O'Brien, Criterion Collection
Ida Z. daRoza
French Post-War Classicism
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
This is as close as you can get to post war being that it was made four months after the German surrender. Although the film is not of that time frame. I was interested in the fact that this is why it was filmed in Black and White, due to the expense of film after the war. Although he did want to make it in color. I think he did wonderful work with black and white showing the mistiness of the forest and a shadowy castle, not very bright. This in the beginning and other scenes where darkness and light play in cinematography into the darker or lighter parts of the narrative.
This image is of the Beast is after he has woken up Belle. He had brought her upstairs after she fainted upon their first sight of each other. Beast walked up to her gently and looked at her already in love with her. He very carefully and lovingly took her up to a sumptuous room with a white fur bedspread and white delicate hanging canopies above her bed.
It is a beautiful room and he wears luxurious garments with opulent jewelry. All this richness can’t change things for him in his life. It is heart breaking to see him stare at Belle waiting for her to wake up. His eyes are open wide in a moment of hope.
Then in this picture we see his shame as he retreats towards the door. He says, don’t look in my eyes. You have nothing to fear. Where he had just moments ago had a sliver of hope.
Knowing that Coctaeu had terrible eczema and also that he was gay, I felt he had experienced this pain in his life and was able to bring the emotion to this film. The hopeful stare at a person to please accept me as I am and then the painful realization that this is just like all the other times I’ve been rejected by people for my looks or by society. It’s a deep hurt and his backing away and saying you don’t have to look at me and I’ll only ask you to once a day at seven for dinner. I’ll quietly vanish in the background and leave you to the luxuries of the castle but please don’t leave me.
It’s a harsh reality in this enchanted castle that he cannot change and also in society people have prejudices that cannot be changed. It is a timeless message that we see about the lack of acceptance in society currently with Black Lives Matter as one example. The beauty in the story’s conclusion is that He does find acceptance for being exactly who he is because of his heart and kindness. That’s what we all want.
Classicism seems warmer than the Neorealism or Italian Modernism. We see that in this luxuriousness of the costume and sets. We’re not on Antonioni’s bare, rocky island anymore. We’re also missing political statements. The emotions like love and fear are easy to read on the actors faces and actions. We are not guessing what people are thinking or feeling.
Cocteau’s style experiments with surreal style to make the fairy tale. This is seen with the human hand chandeliers or with Belle gliding not walking down the hallway. This surreal style he used served the story well bringing magic to a fairy tale.
The closest matching French director style that I would compare to Cocteau is Max Ophüls. In the film The Earrings of Madame de…(1953) there are luxurious costumes of wealthy aristocracy and they go to parties in grand palaces. The costumes and sets are rich and it is a tragic-romantic story. The style of Ophüls camerawork is different in that his camera is always moving in the scenes. Cocteau's shots seem longer and steadier.
Another similarity is that both directors have empowered female characters. Belle decides what she wants to do, she's not a victim. In Max Ophüls film Le Plasir the women in the brothel are in control of their situation. There are men that try to take advantage of them in the train or on the farm, and they fight fiercely back about being disrespected. Madame de... is a wife but very in control of her life. She sells off jewels or her furs when she wants money and has an affair at her wish.
Female empowerment was confirmed in an article I read by the SF MOMA dated 4/17/2012 in which they say that "Ophüls was an ardent feminst."
One shocking thing about The Earrings of Madame de... is that Vittorio De Sica, the director of Bicycle Thief, was one of the main characters. A suave, Italian diplomat who has an affair with Madame de. I read De Sica was a heavy gambler and perhaps for that reason took on a lot of paid acting jobs.
Edited by Ida Daroza on Sep 27 at 5:35pm
GRADE 3/3
Post from a Classmate Citlaly:
Hello Ida, I appreciate how you focus a lot on your post about prejudice and the longing for someone to love you as you are. I definitely believe that Cocteau had a lot to express about this, and he did it in an amazingly dramatic and romantic way. You also mentioned that french post-war classism is warmer than Italian neorealism, I completely agree. This Film portrays in a far more fictional and romantic way envy, feminism, even machismo, and how society judges us by what they see.
Response to a Classmates Post:
Your post brought up interesting thoughts on the contrasting styles of later directors.
While there was a little hunting in The Beauty and the Beast - where there was a dead deer at Belle's feet. I think the Beast had the instinct to hunt for his food. However, that is alluded to and not at all like the hunting in Rules of the Game where we see little rabbits and pheasants shot out of the air.
I think Beauty and the Beast shows a little touch of society where the two older sisters try to attend a society function but are chased away because they no longer have the socio-economic clout to make them acceptable to society.
However, the styles are completely different in that Coctaeu makes it comedic but Renoir shows callous and cold aristocracy playing killing for sport.
Sakura Kuo wrote:
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