One Paragraph Movie Review: La Belle et la Bete

Three hundred and second film: La Belle et la Bete, or ‘Beauty and the Beast’ if you absolutely must. A film made in 1946 by Jean Cocteau, noted poet, Dadaist, and one of those people who is good at everything, the effects are better, spookier, and more magical than the animated Disney version, which just seems lazy by comparison. Humanesque sculptures move, candelabras and wine bottles are held by disembodied hands, doors and mirrors whisper comfort. Belle, the beauty, is a dewy-skinned plot necessity, but the beast is fantastic — a hairy-faced beastly beast in the fanciest of pants. It’s the familiar story — beautiful daughter volunteers imprisonment at the hands of a monster to spare her father’s life, only to fall in love with her captor, transforming him into a rich hottie. It’s a moral tale about putting too much value on good looks, in which the heroine’s reward for not falling in love with a good-looking bloke is: a good-looking bloke. It’s melodramatic as all good fairy tales should be, and if everyone walked a bit faster they could cut the run time by half an hour, but decent. Three teleporting right gloves out of five.