Ciné-Concert: Beauty and the Beast

This new universe troubles me, disturbs me, captivates me. I had created music in my head without realizing it, and the orchestra's waves contradicted it. Little by little, Auric triumphs over my absurd embarrassment. My music gives way to his. This music marries the film, permeates it, exalts it, completes it.

Without a doubt, Beauty and the Beast is one of the greatest masterpieces of French cinema of the Liberation. Directed by Jean Cocteau, assisted by René Clément, and filmed in August 1945, this film brings together the major talents of the time. When he adapted the tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Jean Cocteau conceived the screenplay and the staging simultaneously, wishing to place them within a very precise visual universe.
At once an homage to the great masters of 17th-century Dutch painting, such as Pieter de Hooch or Johannes Vermeer, who were then discovering the use of the camera obscura, Beauty and the Beast also borrows from the art of 19th-century engraving, notably Gustave Doré. It is the directional light of these engravings that guides the eye of cinematographer Henri Alekan as he aims his spotlights at Christian Bérard's sets. Brought to life by Josette Day (Belle), Marcel André (the Father), Michel Auclair (Ludovic), and Jean Marais (the Beast, the Prince, and Avenant), the costumes by Georges Escoffier are magnified by the extraordinary makeup of Hagop Arakélian, which forced Jean Marais to spend three to four hours each day applying makeup to his face alone. Both popular and demanding,
Beauty and the Beast is a fantastic, serious, and moving film that questions love just as much as it does death. Georges Auric's score plays no small part in this: a committed composer for the Popular Front, affiliated with Les Six, who entered the Resistance under Vichy and the Occupation, Georges Auric was a traveling companion of Jean Cocteau for nearly thirty years. As a counterpoint to the voice of the narrator, embodied by Jean Cocteau himself, the music is a full narrative element serving the poetic and the fantastic. On the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the film's release, the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France will perform for the world premiere of this film in cine-concert.