|
Beauty and The Beast - Criterion Collection | 
| Director: Jean Cocteau
Actors: Marcel Andre, Michel Auclair, Noel Blin, Josette Day, Janice Felty
Studio: Criterion
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.95
Buy Used: $19.00
(as of September 9, 2010, 10:25 PST.)
You Save: $20.95 (52%)
New (3) Used (6) Collectible (3) from $19.00
Rating:  131 reviews
Sales Rank: 62280
Format: Black & White, Dvd, Subtitled, Ntsc
Language: English (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0780020715
UPC: 037429122020
EAN: 9780780020719
ASIN: 0780020715
Theatrical Release Date: December 23, 1947
Release Date: June 3, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Beauty and the Beast is one of the all-time great movie fantasies, and one of the most gorgeous pictures ever made. It was the first feature film by French director Jean Cocteau, a writer, poet, and painter with ties to the surrealists. (In fact, his first film, The Blood of a Poet, was delayed after the scandal caused by L'Age D'Or, made by his fellow surrealists Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali.) The haunting, surreal visuals (candelabra made of human hands, for example) and a sensitive performance by Jean Marais as the Beast imbue the film with an indelible, mythical power. --Jim Emerson
Description
This masterpiece by the poet of cinema, Jean Cocteau, has enchanted audiences for more than fifty years with its surreal beauty and magical visual effects. Josette Day and Jean Marais shine in the definitive filmed version of the classic romantic tale, which has come to supplant the original fable in the modern imagination. The source of the later television series, animated feature, and Broadway musical, it remains one of our greatest treasures.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 126 more reviews...
Poetic Surrealism Meets Dreamspace August 30, 2010
A Certain Bibliophile
It has often been said that Jean Cocteau was the first major poet and writer to treat the cinema with total seriousness. But actually it was the cinema that made him into a major artist. "The movie screen," he said, "is the true mirror reflecting the flesh and blood of my dreams." And one of his moist poetic, dreamlike films was La Belle et La Bete.
Watching it now, you can't feel its audacity as you might have done at the time. Faithfully, but not totally innocently, based on the fairy tales by Madame LePrince de Beaumont, it is almost purely visual, even if a Freudian analysis is possible. And it is certainly completely different in atmosphere and style from anything that had gone before, at least in the commercial cinema.
The team who made it in 1946 - and it was a team - broke a good many rules at the urge of Cocteau. Georges Auric's memorable music didn't so much underline the visuals as frequently cut across them, reaching a synthesis at vital moments. Henri Alekan's equally extraordinary cinematography, which the studio described unsympathetically as "white cheese," is the opposite of conventionally fantastic. "I'm pushing Alekan in precisely the opposite direction from what fools think is poetic," Cocteau wrote. Alekan's black-and-white photography was sharp and unfuzzy, set in a credible French country landscape that contains not just the realistic home of Beauty, but also the weird, enchanted domicile of the Beast. It could almost be a documentary - which allows us to believe anything Cocteau asks of us.
The result was a film that dared to be naive, asking its audience to revert to childhood, the better to accept its practical magic. It is one of Cocteau's few films that it is wiser to take at face value, rather than explore at the level of later, perhaps more sophisticated (and certainly more pretentious) works, such as the two famous Orphee films. Only when the Beast is transformed into the handsome Jean Marais, and the flight to happiness provides a harmonious ending, do we begin to doubt anything - apart, perhaps, from the Beast's curiously squeaky voice. But even then we are willing to suspend our disbelief. After all, isn't everything else perfectly normal?
Marvelous Film May 20, 2010
Kaye (Canada)
A wonderful film full of magic and mystery. The production thanks to Criterion Films, is excellent and the film is so engrossing you forget that you are reading sub-titles. I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys something a little different and more Imaginative than most. Not for young children and unless they understand French not for older kids either.
 Inspiring, but cold... April 6, 2010
Henning Sebastian Jahre (Oslo, Norway)
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have to admit that I find the acting styles of the French and Italian stars quite wooden and stiff. That said, it does not include Signoret, Montand, Loren and Deneuve....
But here it does! While the scenes, costumes and other production values are an inspiration and a treasure to behold; it still is cold and lifeless... The Beast hisses "Belle" so many times that I could explode and in this case should have been a mute...
Jean Marais as the Prince is laughingly gay and Josette Day is the French Greta Gynt.
All in all - full of good things... but as I said... lifeless...
A visual masterpiece by poet/playwright Jean Cocteau! March 2, 2010
Dennis A. Amith (kndy) (California)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
For many people the days, the mention of "Beauty and the Beast" is something animated by Disney or a TV series from the 1990's but the story of "Beauty and the Beast" was born as a fairy tale back in the 1740's by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and then revised in 1757 by French novelist Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont.
But in 1946, director Jean Cocteau ("The Testament of Orpheus", "Orpheus", "Kes Enfants Terribles") would take the popular story and adapt it into a live action film known as "La belle et la bete" (Beauty and the Beast) featuring cinematography by Henri Alekan and music by Georges Auric.
VIDEO & AUDIO:
It's important to note that "Beauty and the Beast" was among the first DVD's released by the Criterion Collection back in 1998. Around 2003, several of their earlier titles received a re-release including a high-definition digital transfer and more special features.
For "Beauty and the Beast", with the celebration of 100 years in French Cinema, the Centre National de l'audiovisuel of Luxembourg in association with the CLT-UFA International began their restoration on "Beauty and the Beast". The restoration began with the original nitrate negative which suffered from age-related deterioration. The negative was cleaned and many of its sprocket holes repaired, so the negative would roll evenly through the gate at 24 frames per second. A wet-gate process was then used to fill in the scratches and removal of any fine dust. The restorers then made fine-grain positive elements that became the main source for the new restoration negative.
"Beauty and the Beast" is presented in 1:33:1 and the new digital transfer was created from the 35mm restoration duplicate negative on a high-definition Spirit Datacine. The MTI Digital Restoration System removed thousands of instances of dirt, debris and scratches.
The picture quality of "Beauty and the Beast" looks very good for a film that is over 60-years-old. Blacks are nice and deep and grays and white also look great. Granted, it's not a pristine transfer as their is dust and scratches that can be seen but for the most part, the restoration makes it much better looking than any previous release of the film. But most important about the film was its technical creativity. From its surreal and fantasy look, especially the use of slow motion, "Beauty and the Beast" manages to create the magical/fantasy world.
As for the audio, the audio is monaural and was created from an optical soundtrack print and restored at 24-bit using digital audio tools to reduce ticks, pops, hiss and other distortions. Audio is Dolby Digital 1.0 but I preferred to hear the track coming on all channels via a selection on my home theater receiver for a more pronounced soundscape for the film's audio.
Subtitles are in English.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
"Beauty and the Beast - THE CRITERION COLLECTION #6 comes with the following special features:
* Philip Glass Opera - Featuring a text introduction by Philip Glass, the viewer can also watch the entire film via an operatic version. Philip Glass is known for taking cinema and then building music and the actual words from the film which are sung via opera.
* Arthur Knight Commentary - Featuring the original 1991 audio commentary (from the Beauty and the Beast Criterion Collection LD) by film historian Arthur Knight. Knight talks about Cocteau, the difference between the screenplay and the fable, Cocteau's production diary and the use of slow motion in the film, the first screening and more.
* Sir Christopher Frayling Commentary - A second audio commentary featuring writer/cultural historian Sir Christopher Frayling recorded for the British Film Institute in 2001. Frayling goes into furth depth about the era, Cocteau vs. Disney, the pacing of the film and more.
* Screening at the Majestic - (26:48) A featurette about the making of "Beauty and the Beast" including interviews with director Henri Alekan, actress Mila Parely and actor Jean Marais. Also, revisiting the location of where the film was shot.
* Interview with Henri Alekan - (9:14) An interview with Director Henri Alekan to coincide with the restoration of "Beauty and the Beast" in 1995.
* Secrets Professionnels: Tete a Tete - (8:48) Excerpts from the French television show "Secret Professionnels: Tete a Tete" featuring the trade of Hagop Arakelian, makeup artist on "Beauty and the Beast". Aired back on March 12, 1964.
* Original Trailer - (4:01) Featuring the original theatrical trailer of "Beauty and the Beast".
* Restoration Trailer - (1:57) A movie trailer for the restored version of "Beauty and the Beast".
* Film Restoration - (4:05) A short featurette on the restoration of "Beauty and the Beast".
* Stills Gallery - Featuring stills by photographer G.R. Aldo, cinematographer for Orson Welle's "Othello", Luchino Visconti's "Senso" and Vittorio De Sica's "Umberto D." and "Indiscretion of an American Wife".
* 32-Page Booklet - Featuring "Once Upon a Time - French Poet Explains His Filming of a Fairy Tale" by Jean Cocteau", "Notes by Francis Steegmuller from Cocteau: A Biography" and the original story "Beauty and the Beast" by Mme. Leprince de Beaumont.
JUDGMENT CALL:
A masterpiece from Poet-Playwright Jean Cocteau, "Beauty and the Beast" (La belle et la bete) is definitely one of his most inspired films to help define French cinema at that time. Sure, we have seen Hollywood create a magical world and characters with "Wizard of Oz" in 1936 but "Beauty and the Beast" is like a painting on a canvas.
Each scene, especially in the magical castle and world of the beast is captured in such beauty with its cinematography especially when Belle enters the castle for the first time and the use of slow motion, to the visual/dark surroundings of the statues that move, the hands and arms extending out to hold a candle or a drink. Production and set design were just as beautiful. May it be the elaborate look of the home, from its curtains to its silver. The beast's palace is just brimming of upper class merchandise but a lonely, dark setting that he can't even enjoy.
This film is not a happy film like its Disney counterpart. I'm not quite sure if this film was adored by children back then but I can probably guess that children were more than likely scared of the film as the imagery shows a beast, with this raspy voice that will easy scare you or annoy you (ala the supercomputer in Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville"). But nevertheless, actor Jean Marais has done a good job playing the beast, while main actress, Josette Day as Belle, what a beautiful young maiden did a very good job and made us believe in her fear but her growing compassion towards the beast.
Fascinating and visually creative for its time, "Beauty and the Beast" from the Criterion Collection (the 2003 re-release) is a wonderful celebration for Cocteau's film. Overall, "Beauty and the Beast" (Le Belle et La Bete) is definitely recommended!
An Epic of the Imagination!!! February 28, 2010
Nik (Brooklyn, N.Y. USA)
There is a saying about some of the greatest filmmakers of all time... The have childlike tendencies... This movie may prove this saying correct. Jean Cocteau has made a movie more thrilling, and as much as fantastical as those of the great German silent era. He pulls from the depths of his soul, all that we are taught as children and hold so dear to the day we die, having passed it on to our children and theirs... that there is beauty, there are beasts, there is darkness but in that darkness lies a light that can never be lost. The light of beautiful days, we remember in our darkests.
La Belle at a Bete blows open the imagination of everyone who watches it. After first viewing this with my brother, we were so amazed. It opened those locked doors of my imagination and drove me wild with the passion to write beautiful pieces of works. It showed how painting with light is really done, producing some of the most visually succulent images... It also showed me how to be funny, as the two sisters, brother and Belles admirer provide a type of comic relief to this very heavy, emotionally charged film. It balances wonderfully... One of the greatest French films ever made. Every child and adult should share this experience toghether. Enjoy!
|
|
|
| |
|
