Cocteau and Alekan continued to have differences. The lighting of the heads of the living statues was, Cocteau felt, "too lively; it humanized them." In his diary, he wrote, "I still feel I was right to wage war against 'camera effects' and soft textures. Yesterday's pictures were a thousand times more robust, and presented that sculptured outline in light that I admire so in Perinal. The women lose by it. Their roles gain. By degrees, Alekan is finding his equilibrium and getting into his camerawork what corresponds to the particular way I tell a story, gesticulate, write."
One day Alekan reported that some of the studio personnel were criticizing the photography as "cheesy" and badly lit. Cocteau wrote, "Strange he does not know what I have taken for granted for years that whenever one attempts something new, people become blind, seeing only the parts that are like the things they already know. It has been decided that anything soft and fuzzy is poetic. Now since, in my opinion, poetry is precision itself, is mathematics, I drive Alekan toward the opposite of what appears poetic to fools"
In addition to daring photography, the film offers numerous in-camera special effects or as Cocteau called them, "Tricks, but honest tricks, the only kind I can get excited about." Some are the kind used in the early years of moving pictures, in which the camera is halted in the midst of action, the players "freeze," an object in the scene is replaced by something else, and the scene continues. This basic technique was used to create scenes in which a falling pearl necklace changes into trash, Beauty's tears become diamonds, and so on. The most memorable sequence is Beauty's journey through the castle, in which she seems to be floating along slowly, her voluminous costume billowing like flames. The effect was achieved by photographing Josette Day at high speed as she ran through the settings. The resulting slow-motion gives the scene both a dreamlike quality and a magical look. One scene in a long hallway with blowing draperies is almost identical to a scene in the 1927 picture The Cat and the Canary, directed by Paul Leni and photographed by Gil Warrenton, ASC. Certain other parts of her journey have a much different look because Beauty seems to be floating along without moving her limbs a small rolling platform was concealed by her floor-length skirts.
La Belle's more complicated effects shots were saved for the last day and night of work at St. Maurice Studios. In one scene, Beauty appears to walk through a wall into her father's house. Actually, she was photographed backing into a specially prepared place in the wall, and the sequence was reversed in printing so that the wall appears unblemished until she bursts through, the effect accented by the nearby drapes rippling backwards. Similarly, the scene of Beauty and the ex-Beast rising into the air was made by photographing them at high speed as they dropped to the floor, and then printing the action in reverse. The last scene, showing their flight through the clouds, was done with multiple exposures. The figures were photographed prone (and solidly anchored) while a wind machine rippled their clothing and the camera moved back. This effect benefits from the naïve freshness of the technique, but suffers from its limitations. The close-up showing the dying Avenant becoming a beast was done with one still photo crudely "morphing" into another in a strange, spreading dissolve inferior to many of Hollywood's similar efforts on behalf of werewolves and Dr. Jekyll. Although he avoided using optical printing effects on the picture, Cocteau went the opposite direction while making the film's trailer, in which multiple moving images are manipulated and arranged like postage stamps.
Auric had worked on La Belle's musical score during production, but was not allowed to see assembled footage because Cocteau wanted him to avoid deliberate synchronization with the images. Cocteau had mentally created a rough score of his own during production, and refused to hear any of Auric's composition until the film was edited and sound in place. He even avoided the recording sessions, which were conducted by Roger Desormiere with a symphonic orchestra and chorus, because he wanted to "receive the shock of it without preparation."
And shocked he was. The music contradicted all of his preconceived ideas. In some scenes the music complements the visuals in a fairly conventional manner, but in others it seems unrelated to what is happening on the screen. Long scenes in which there is no music or any other sound, such as the walk through the hall of handheld candelabras, are interrupted by startling bursts of orchestral sound. The score is rich and somewhat reminiscent of Ravel, and there is no attempt to make it unobtrusive. In all, the score is unlike any of Auric's other film music, with the exception of a deliberately imitative 1948 Franco-British picture, Corridor of Mirrors.
Cocteau quickly overcame his discomfort with the music, however, and praised his composer's efforts. "His music marries my picture, impregnates it, exalts it, completes it," he declared. All doubts were expelled by the enthusiastic reaction to a screening at Joinville before an audience of studio technicians, whom he called "people whose life work consists in preserving the 'blood of poets' in tin cans."
La Belle went on to win the Prix Louis Delluc, and became Cocteau's most popular film. He lived to write and direct a half-dozen more pictures of varying quality, most starring Marais, and wrote numerous screenplays for other directors. Marais became more popular than ever after Cocteau's death in 1963, most notably in the title role of a series of Fantomas thrillers.
Despite its widespread popularity, however, La Belle does have some puzzling aspects. Probably its strangest touch is the moment when the Beast, released from his curse, transforms into a ringer for Beauty's would-be lover, who was a rotter.
"A film is never finished," Cocteau wrote while La Belle was being edited. "There's always something more to be done, and each thing becomes more difficult than ever because a troupe, though it flows apart like mercury, cannot take shape again as mercury does. It returns to find itself in a land of shadows. Each person comes out of another world. Our world [that of the film] is now a memory."
[ continued on page 4 ]