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| Jean
Cocteau |
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| Director
/ Screenwriter / Actor / Editor |
| 1889 - 1963 |
| Born July 5,
Maisons-Lafitte, Yvelines, Île-de-France, France |
| Key
Production Country: France |
| Key Genres:
Avant-garde/Experimental,
Fantasy, Surrealist Film |
| Key
Collaborators: Georges
Auric (Composer), Jean Marais (Leading Player), Josette Day (Leading
Player), Andre Paulve (Producer), Marcel Andre (Leading Character
Player), Christian Berard (Production Designer), Jean d'Eaubonne
(Production Designer) |
| Highly
Recommended: Orpheus (1950) |
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Recommended:
The Blood of a Poet (1930), La
Belle et la bête (1946), Les Parents Terribles (1948) |
| Links:
[ IMDB ]
[
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [ Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ]
[
Film Reference ] [
Official Website
(French) ]
[
Books and Writers
Biography ] [ Jean
Cocteau: The Blood of a Poet ] [ Bright
Lights Film Journal: Orphic Trilogy ] [ Boston
Phoenix Article ] [ Guardian
Unlimited Article ] [
Jean
Cocteau Page ] |
| Books: [
The
Art of Cinema ] [ Cocteau:
A Biography ] [ Reviewing
Orpheus: Essays on the Cinema and Art of Jean Cocteau ]
[
My Contemporaries ] [
Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film ] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films: The Blood of a Poet
(1930), La Belle et la bête (1946),
Orpheus (1950) |
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"A
French poet who became a film-maker in his forties, Cocteau
proceeded to create films on fantastic themes, with great
pictorial beauty, full of haunting, memorable images and
distinctly other-worldly, almost ethereal performances from his
own little company of actors that included his great friend Jean
Marais. Cocteau once said that a film 'permits one to give the
appearance of reality to the non-real' and that is exactly what
his most famous films do." - David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"His egotism
made him a solitary, maverick figure. But in stressing
playfulness, amateurism, and the disposition to the dream
experience of movies, Cocteau is a vital link between the
avant-garde and the underground. The curious weightlessness in
his work, although it might be thought to conform to his own
ideals of lightness, bars him from greatness. Arguably, there
are films based on his works by other men that are more
searching than his own pictures. But Cocteau serves as a comet,
passing over French cinema, throwing a vivid light on the
landscape." -
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002) |
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"Jean
Cocteau's contribution to cinema is as eclectic as one would
expect from a man who fulfilled on occasion the roles of poet
and novelist, dramatist and graphic artist, and dabbled in such
diverse media as ballet and sculpture. In addition to his
directorial efforts, Cocteau also wrote scripts and dialogue,
made acting appearances, and realized amateur films. His work in
other media has inspired adaptations by a number of filmmakers
ranging from Rossellini to
Franju and
Demy, and he himself published
several collections of eclectic and stimulating thoughts on the
film medium." -
Roy Armes (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) |
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"Cocteau
is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that
there's no doubt he's influenced every one of my films."
- Jacques Rivette |
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"A maker of avant-garde and fantasy films, Cocteau also lensed
the fine realist drama Les Parents Terribles (48), plus
other notables (Blood of the Poet, 30; Orphee,
49)." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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