Cocteau, Jean‐Maurice‐Eugène‐Clément
Cocteau, Jean‐Maurice‐Eugène‐Clément (1889–1963),French artist, writer, and cinematographer. Given Cocteau's loose ties to futurism, dada, and surrealism, his penchant for the fantastic, from the very beginning of his career, is not at all surprising. Hence, he explores various types and levels of ‘reality’ in much of his work, including his early cartoon, Le Potomak (1919); his plays Oedipus Rex (1927), La Machine infernale (The Infernal Machine, 1934), and Les Chevaliers de la table ronde (The Knights of the Round Table, 1963); and his films L'Éternel retour (The Eternal Return, 1943) and La Belle et la bête ( Beauty and the Beast , 1946).
Cocteau deals most directly with the fairy tale in his cinematic version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Although now considered a classic, at the time of its release in the...
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