"Beauty and the Beast" Response

The world of Beauty and the Beast (1946), despite being a classic tale that has been told time and time again, exists in a mythology unique to the film and its director, Jean Cocteau. The whole film attempts to create an otherworldly, dreamlike atmosphere for its characters to inhabit and walk through, and it does a remarkable job at this (well, sometimes). The Beast’s castle, the most important setting of Cocteau’s “fairy tale without fairies”, bombards the viewer with information to reinforce this idea that the place that we are seeing exists in some other state.

The most effective method in which the film achieves this goal is through the use of special effects. The scene in which Beauty’s father first enters the castle might be the best in the entire movie. The ethereal, disembodied hands light the way to a room that seems entirely detached; other than the table and fireplace, the entirety of the room is pitch black, making it seem as though they were formed from a void. The eerie calmness of the living statues and arms paired with the lack of any underscoring or sound effects sets the stage for an fairy tale like no other.

Outside of this scene, the special effects and sound design are far less consistent. Some things, such as the talking door and mirror, are done with an elegance that helps them mesh with rest of the movie (by using a disembodied voice instead of, say, a mouth superimposed onto the door, the effect maintains an air of subtlety). In other parts, however, subtlety is thrown out the window, such as the swelling score upon the parting of branches to reveal a lackluster fake castle, or the ending in which the prince and Belle fly off into the sky through the magic of reverse projection. The feel of the movie is sometimes spot on, but other times it’s just too corny to take seriously.

Talking about the story of the film is not useless,but it does feel slightly redundant. We have all seen some version of Beauty and the Beast, likely the Disney version, so the moral lesson the fable is already known to most: if you act with kindness and goodness, you can overcome poverty and ugliness, but if you act with malice, your wealth or beauty will be worthless. The most most important difference between Cocteau’s version and the riginaltale is that he introduces the Avenant character to the story, who acts as a much stronger double to the Beast. Avenant is beautiful with an ugly core, and the Beast is ugly with a virtuous core. It’s only fitting that the movie ends with them switching exteriors to match their true natures.

And, as for any notions of an Oedipal relationship between Belle and her father, I think that these analyses may be reading into the text too far. Yes, their relationship is ambiguous, but it’s the relationship of a girl forced to act as a caregiver and servant in place of the mother would have with her father, nothing else. She loves him because he cares for her, unlike anyone else in her life up until meeting the Beast. Avenant may claim to love her, but he only felt lust. The Beast, despite his appearance, was a gentleman, and his caring spirit won him him Belle’s heart.