Synopsis
Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête, 1946) is Jean Cocteau's French fairy-tale film, available to watch online on iFILM. A lost merchant plucks a single rose from an enchanted garden for his daughter — and seals his own death unless Belle takes his place.
She rides out to the Beast's castle to save her father and becomes a prisoner in a manor where living arms hold the candelabra and the walls seem to watch her move. The creature is monstrous to look at yet aching with loneliness, and every night he asks for her hand, every night she refuses. Belle travels between her father's house and the castle, drawn closer to the beast even as the time he has left runs out. Jean Marais plays three roles, opposite Josette Day as Belle.
Cocteau, a poet and painter first, made this less a children's story than a waking dream, with cinematographer Henri Alekan giving the image the drift of a trance. The famous effects were built entirely by hand, and decades on they cast a stronger spell than any modern CGI. It became the benchmark for poetic cinema that both Cocteau's heirs and Disney looked back to. Anyone who loves the visual magic of early film should not miss it. Stream Beauty and the Beast (1946) online on iFILM.
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