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I have a habit of getting movies off Netflix and sometimes not watching the movie right away.  Sometimes I will watch five or six other movies from Netflix while this one movie sits alone on the Doctor Who/Whedon shelf.  Nine times out of ten the movie that suffers this fate, when I finally get around to watching it, will knock me out.

It’s true.  It happened with Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, der Zon Gottes” (Aguirre, Wrath of God) and his “Fitzcarrldo”.  It has happened with Bergman films, Cassavetes films, it happened with Roberto Rossellini’s “Roma, citta aperta” (Open City).  The list goes on with Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter” and so forth, and so on, and so on.

I bring all this up because I’ll be damned if it did not happen again.  The culprit was Jean Cocteau’s 1942 lyrical masterpiece “La belle et la bete” (Beauty and the Beast).  On top of that Cocteau is a repeat offender(ee?).  A year or two ago the same fate befell Cocteau’s other visual poem “Orphee” (Orpheus) in which, believe it or not, he took a Greek myth and improved upon it.

In short Jean Cocteau, is not just great, he’s irritatingly great.  Honestly, how can one man be that good!?  I’ve seen only two movies by the man, one was  at least two years ago remember, and I am in utter awe of his directing prowess.  I will undoubtedly be seeing James Cameron’s “Avatar” and while the CGI is supposedly beautiful to the point of crapping your pants in amazement; it will probably not hold a candle to the the sheer visual, “conjuring” is the only word that aptly describes what he does, as Cocteau has done in these films.

From the entrance of Death via a mirror into Orpheus’ room in “Orphee” to the shot of Belle’s father walking down the hallway in the Beast’s castle corridor past all those haunting candelabras in “La belle et la bete”.  The man not only knows to frame a shot but how to stir your soul.

The beginning of “La belle et la bete” is what won me over.  So simple, yet so daring, and even still so necessary.  After all this is a fairy tale, sheer fantasy, how do you remind the audience of this?  How do you tell the audience that this is sheer fantasy, plus  its  a movie so forgive us our limitations and our refusal to dalliance with logic and all these earthly troublesome narrative structures.

Simple, click here and learn.

Do you see?  How he just came right out and said, this is a movie that we made, and we ask that you remember to be a child?  It’s the misdirection before the magic begins.

Cocteau is a master at using camera tricks and other cinematic trickery to extrapolate that otherworldly dream feeling.  All in all the man is a consummate visual master.

Every man, woman, and child knows the story of “Beauty and the Beast” by heart, so there is no need for me to tread over that old trodden ground again.  Its fair to say, though, that if you have not see Cocteau’s version then you have not seen “Beauty and the Beast”.

Jean Marais (The Beast/Avenant) and Josette Day (Belle) are the centerpiece performances.  While Cocteau is weaving his fantastical dream they have to walk a tightrope of a performance and they do so effortlessly.

To describe “La belle et la bete” in any kind of great detail seems futile for an amateur reviewer like myself.  Sitting here right now as I type this review I am at a loss for words.  How do you describe what is essentially fantastical collection of dream like imagery and melodrama.

To be honest I can only repeat what I have said before and add that Jean Cocteau has succeed in making one of the few truly hauntingly beautiful films ever made, and that’s not mere blurb-ism, that’s the truth.