Beauty and the Beast (1946 version)

Michael George

10/30/2010

Beauty and the Beast

Total Running Time: 01:33:00

Language: French

Director: Jean Cocteau

Awards: #26 in Empire Magazine's "100 Best Films of World Cinema" (2010)

     Beauty and the Beast or La Belle et la Bete is a French film from 1946 that was directed by Jean Cocteau. It portrays most of the elements from the animated Disney movie we all saw as children, but there were several differences. The live action version we watched seems to be much darker with more emphasis on death, betrayal, and for the most part, overall stupidity. This film also didn't have any musical numbers, thank god. While it was mentioned in class that some see Beauty and the Beast as a feminist film, I tend to disagree. Feminist views and theories usually deal with female empowerment and enlightenment. Beauty and the Beast is the exact opposite of this, in my opinion. Belle is a slave to her family at first, pretty much subservant to men, and only gains wealth and self esteem after finding a man who loves her and is bestowed with a huge castle and treasures. If anything, I would see more Marxist and Formalist Theories in this film based on its motion of the plot and the new advances of "special effects" showcased here.

     Two articles I used researching this film can be looked at here and here. I chose these articles because they focus on the special effects, writing,  and acting of the film, with the first article being in favor of the production and the second article praises these things, while not liking pretty much everything else. The first article starts off by talking about the make-up job on the Beast. Apparently, his beastly mask was very progressive for the time and the author comments on how the eye brows were able to move, along with the mouth, and was able to give Beast the opportunity to showcase various emotions through almost primative special effects. It then talks about the arm ornaments and people in the wooden furniture and how it was progressive as well. Then it mentions that Beast hands would smoke every time he kills something. I never picked up on this in the film. The second article starts off mentioning that one of the theme's of the film is staring death in the face, yet transforming it into something positive and beautiful. It also states that the score of the film played a crucial role in creating the atmosphere and the DVD even has bonus tracks on it. Just like the first article, credit is given to the production values of this film.

     These two articles relate to the Marxist and Formalist Film Theories. I'm still baffled by how they made the magic mirror effects happen. We would probably do that with green screen, but I know film makers certainly didn't have that back then. So, how did they do it? Angles? Beauty and The Beast defnitely showed the advancements in film making. These special effects almost seemed like a character in the film that drove the plot more than the boring acting. I can't forget to mention that they steared the plot away from most Feminist theories in, in my opinion, as magic doesn't have a sex so it can't favor one gender over the other. Still, I think Beauty and The Beast can also be seen as semi-auteristic based on the directions of production they chose which differed from an even more original version written several years earlier. I didn't catch some of the themes mentioned in both articles, so they were interesting to think about while typing this up.

     I guess this film was ok. I started getting bored into sleep for the first 20 minutes because the film was very dull, not much was going on, and I guess I need flashy things on screen to entertain me. Once I came out of my slumber for the last hour of the movie I was actually entertained by the special effects. I think it was these new advancements that really sold the film. Could you imagine trying to watch the film without them? It would be even more terrible. I didn't like the acting; the under acting at points made certain moments weird to watch. When you see something scary, you expect the actor to be scared. When they don't act that way, you question why. This movie is a good example that should be used for film history purposes, but should be sealed away in vault and not watched after that.

SOURCES:

"Beauty And The Beast." Matt Langdon. 12 February 2003. Film Critic. http://www.filmcritic.com/reviews/1946/beauty-and-the-beast/

"Beauty And The Beast." Christopher Lloyd. 2 August 2010. http://www.thefilmyap.com/2010/08/02/beauty-and-the-beast-1946/