Beauty and the Beast
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.49 You Save: $13.46 (67%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.69 (click here) Category: VHS Video See more movie releases |
|---|
Buy this VHS video movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
VHS Movie Reviews of Beauty and the Beast
Movie Review: A beautiful restoration
Summary: 5 Stars
Although I have owned the Cocteau "Beauty and the Beast" on tape for a number of years, I was hesitant to buy the Criterion Collection restored version on DVD because I had read that there was a new sound track: an opera by Philip Glass. What was not clear to me was that the new sound track is only one of the options; another is the original sound track, much cleaner than on the tape version.
Many DVDs of restored classics include examples of the restoration; this one doesn't. I played the Criterion DVD, then my VHS version, and I was amazed at the difference; the DVD makes the film look as if it were made yesterday; the tape version has all the scratches, pops, and muffled dialogue that are more or less typical of tapes made from deteriorated films. The subtitles on the DVD are easier to read than the ones on the tape (the DVD uses a different type font), there are two different commentaries included among the options, and the Philip Glass opera version is there as well. There is a print bonus as well: a booklet that includes the text of the original fairy tale, Cocteau's comments on filming it, and a critic's comments on the film.
The opening credits alone are worth the price of the DVD: Cocteau himself, writing on a blackboard (the tape version only displays text against a background).
Movie Review: Beauty and The Beast-Criterion Collection, Restored
Summary: 5 Stars
This restored version is magnificent. I was
amazed at the difference between this and my
old vhs unrestored version. Cocteau's film
remains one of the most visually mesmerizing ever made.
I do however agree with Greta Garbo's comment
regarding the true to the original story ending,
"Give me back my Beast."
Movie Review: Beautiful, if a bit vapid.
Summary: 3 Stars
La Belle et la Bête (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
You know the story, of course. Belle (Josette Day), the neglected and beautiful younger sister of two wastrel women, once noble but now in somewhat dire straits, goes to the castle of the Beast (Jean Marais) to pay a blood debt invoked by her father. The Beast, however, doesn't kill the girl, but ends up falling in love with her. Then the kiss, and the handsome prince revealed, and all that. You've seen the Disney version.
Don't let that fool you. Disney, as you probably know, oversimplifies everything, and when you put a fairy tale in the hands of a wonderful director like Jean Cocteau, you're going to get a much finer film. And while this is certainly not a perfect film, it does put paid to the puling mediocrity (with the catchy tunes) Disney cranked out.
Day plays a wonderfully nuanced Belle. She's far from the goody-two-shoes Disney portrays Belle as, a woman whose servitude to her two sisters has hardened her. As well it should have. She is honest, somewhat tactless, and a much harder heroine to mindlessly identify with. Her father sees her as a paragon of goodness, but really, if your two other daughters were like these two, who wouldn't? Marais as the Beast, however, is a bit more problematic. I grant you, a lot of the reason for this is that the film's makeup artist made the Beast look more like a teddy bear than The Wolf Man's Lon Chaney. Now, you and I both know the Beast is supposed to be a tragic figure, but really, making his fangs uneven and carefully coiffing his hairdo? The argument could be made that it went with his wonderfully stylized costuming, but were that the case, why couldn't he just kidnap a dentist and have some work done on that left fang? His delivery is somewhat stilted most of the time, but I'm willing to put that down to the difficulty of enunciating through what must have been pounds of makeup.
The film's ninety-three minutes also gives us less time than we really need to see the developing relationship between Belle and the Beast. With all the fairy tale's subplots needing to grab screen time as well (and Cocteau is almost lavishly faithful to the intricacy of the fairy tale), the centerpiece of the story gets oddly short shrift. Belle goes from abrupt dismissal to wanting to be the Beast's friend in a matter of frames. As the film goes on, things get a little smoother, but those first encounters between the two of them do jar.
The reason to watch this film, though, as with any Cocteau film, is the wonderful stylization in the sets. The Beast's castle is a wonder of disembodied arms as servants, busts that swivel their heads to follow characters' movements, magic mirrors, and the like. Cocteau wants to use the frame of the story to deliver a visual feast, and he delivers. The juxtaposition of the sunny town where Belle's family lives, which is your basic peasant town, and the Beast's sumptuous, but dark, castle is wonderfully done. Cocteau began his artistic life as a painter, and it shows in his set design.
La Belle et la Bête ends up being more a visual feast than a compelling story, but it's still worth watching after all these years. Fun and enjoyable. ***
Movie Review: Philip Glass was not hired by Coteau to write his Soundtrack
Summary: 1 Stars
I find it repulsive that this movie has been released with an added soundtrack which the director did not intend for the film. It's not Cocteau's film anymore. The film has been altered without his approval. GREAT FILM, lousy choice by Criterion. 1 star for a bad version of a good film. Movie Review: The Keeper of the Unwanted Rose as Monster
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the great masterpieces of cinema and one of my all time favorite films. Jean Cocteau's version of Beauty and the Beast is by far the ultimate version of this classic fairy tale fable, bar none. Rarely is pure enchantment captured on celluloid magnificently; Wizard of Oz, The Red Shoes, Snow White and Babe are among enduring examples of great cinematic enchantment, but Cocteau's version rules supreme above all others.
Where to start? The magical castle filled with living statues, object d'art and magic mirrors that watch over Beauty? (The famous arms as candlabra protruding from the entrance hall walls is a famous image repeated as recently as in the musical version of Phantom of the Opera, itself of course another version of Beauty and the Beast.) Or the impossibly handsome and charming Jean Marais in triplet as Beauty's suitor, the Prince, and the Beast? Perhaps the shimmering, gorgeous black and white photography, blessedly rescued, finally, in this restored DVD version? (For years Cocteau's film was only available via videos and rare televison viewings with wretched prints.) Or the addition of Philip Glass' new score? All of these things add up to make Beauty and the Beast one of the best films ever, but at the center of course is the master of the enchanted castle, the Beast himself. Looking like a cross between a bear and a cat, draped in elaborate costuming over the Beast outfit, still Marais manages to move with grace and lithe movements, balletic even, and is able to convey the Beast's tortured emotions and inner conflicts with his eyes, voice and gestures. Brilliantly conceived by Cocteau, modeled (as was the look of the entire film) after the great 19th century French illustrator Gustave Dore's rendering of the fable, Jean Marais is pure poetry as the Beast, who is one of the great romantic, tragic figures in art, a rose bearing, tortured, Byronesque being, conflicted between his impossible love for Beauty and his own innate savagery ("I am a monster--yet my heart is good," he laments to Beauty, a heartbreaking line delivered in a way that stops you in your tracks).
With this DVD restored version, one of the miracles among movies has been brought back to gorgeous life for new generations to treasure. Beauty and the Beast finally are united when the dying Beast turns into the handsome Prince. Upon seeing the film Greta Garbo is supposedly said to have cried "I want my Beast back!"
Indeed--as would we all.