Episode 96: Beautiful Beast: On Jean Cocteau's 'La Belle et la Bete'
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Jean Cocteau\'s visionary rendition of Madame de Beaumont\'s fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," itself the retelling of a story that may be several millennia old, is the topic of this Weird Studies episode, which proposes a journey down lunar paths to the crossroads where love and death intersect. Drawing on Surrealism, myth, and the occult, Cocteau\'s 1946 film transcends the limitations of media to become a living poem, a thing that is also a place, a place that is also a mind. This conversation touches on the genius of the child, the mysteries of Eros, the monstrosity of consciousness, and the sorcery of cinema.
\\n\\nPhoto by Ivan Jevtic on Unsplash
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\\n\\nREFERENCES
\\n\\nJean Cocteau (dir.), La Belle et la B\\xeate
\\n\\nJaques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry
\\nSergei Diaghilev, Russian impresario
\\nGary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (dir.), Beauty and the Beast
\\nDavid Thomson, Have You Seen?
\\nBram Stoker, Dracula
\\nJohannes Vermeer, Dutch painter
\\nPhilip Glass, La Belle et la B\\xeate (opera)
\\nGame of Thrones, Television series
\\nWeird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress Card
\\nWeird Studies, Episode 94 on the Moon Card