Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast is a strange piece of work. The 1946 romantic fantasy is derived from two French fairy tales, the first of which gave it its name and most of its content and the second (La Chatte Blanche) offering the idea of servants consisting of arms and hands. Cocteau creates an interesting tableau of magic and romance, but the film feels clunky and awkward thanks to a number of interesting choices.
The Disney version of Beauty and the Beast from 1991 gathers a lot of its stuff from Cocteau, so it’s worth a look just to see where the Oscar-nominated animated feature came from. And a lot of people do consider this Beauty and the Beast to be one of the better films in world cinema, so there’s that. I found it to be rather ham-fisted and flavourless, however, and couldn’t get past a lot of the barefaced theatrics.
