Ciné-Concert La Belle & la Bête
When: 23.11.2026 20:00
Where: 48.857614, 2.346758
Organizer: Admin
This new universe unsettles me, worries me, captivates me. I created music without noticing it, and the waves of the orchestra contradict it. Gradually Auric overcomes my absurd embarrassment. My music yields to his. This music merges with the film, penetrates it, elevates it, completes it.
Jean Cocteau,
Without doubt, La Belle et la Bête is one of the greatest masterpieces of French cinema of the liberation era. Filmed by Jean Cocteau, with the assistance of René Clément, shot in August 1945, this film brings together the leading talents of that time. When he adapts the fairy tale by Jeanne‑Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Jean Cocteau simultaneously develops the script and staging that he wants to fit into a very precise visual universe.
At the same time serving as a tribute to the great masters of 17th‑century Dutch painting, such as Pieter de Hooch or Johannes Vermeer, who were then discovering the use of the camera obscura, La Belle et la Bête also borrows from the art of 19th‑century engraving, with Gustave Doré. And it is the directed lighting of these engravings that guides the eye of Henri Alekan, the chief cinematographer, as he points his spotlights at the sets of Christian Bérard.
Supported by Josette Day (Belle), Marcel André (le Père), Michel Auclair (Ludovic) and Jean Marais (la Bête, le Prince et Avenant), the costumes by Georges Escoffier are enhanced by the extraordinary makeup of Hagop Arakélian, which requires Jean Marais to spend three to four hours each day to paint his sole face. The work is simultaneously popular and demanding,
La Belle et la Bête is a fantastic, serious and moving film that raises questions about both love and death.
The score by Georges Auric is no accident in this matter: the composer, committed to the Front populaire, associated with the group Six, who joined the Resistance under Vichy and Occupation, Georges Auric has been Jean Cocteau's companion for almost thirty years. In counterpoint to the narrator's voice embodied by Jean Cocteau himself, the music serves as a full‑fledged narrative element, serving poetry and fantasy. On the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the film's release, the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France is supporting the world's first projection of this film in a ciné‑concert format.
Tags: film, concert, music
Source: https://www.paris.fr/evenements/cine-concert-la-belle-la-bete-113815
Open in Vibelocate · Markdown