The Movie: La Belle et La Bete (1945)
What Is It?: With its combination of furry creatures
and romance, Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast isn’t too far removed from, say, The Wolf Man, and nothing in the latter
movie is as genuinely creepy as the Beast’s surreal castle, with its candle
sconces of human arms and living faces glaring back from its fireplace. Still La Belle et La Bete is a fairy tale at
heart, and it is only rivaled by The
Wizard of Oz as the most enchanting one ever brought to the big screen. The
final moments are positively transcendent.
Why Today?: On
this day in 1889, Jean Cocteau is
born.
