Product Details

• Actors: Jean Cocteau
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Kultur Video
• DVD Release Date: July 25, 2006
• Run Time: 45 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000G1ALJS
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #160,116 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A fascinating documentary that presents the story of the writer's life, and examines the social and political events that influenced their works.Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, and filmmaker, whose versatility, unconventionality, and enormous output brought him international acclaim. As a leading member of the surrealist movement, he had a great influence on the work of others.

Cocteau was born on July 5th, 1889 near Paris. He was a poor student and dropped out of school. At the age of 16, Cocteau met the actor Edouard de Max who launched him as a poet. His first volume of verse, La Lampe d’Aladin, appeared in 1909 and quickly established him as an important writer. The establishment of the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 brought its great impressive Sergei Diaghilev into Cocteau’s world and involved the poet in the theater. Diaghilev later produced Cocteau’s ballet scenarios Parade (1917) and Le boeuf sur le toit (The Nothing-Doing Bar, 1920). During World War I, Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. During that same period, he met Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and many other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated or who influenced his life. In 1923, Cocteau became addicted to opium, an experience he described in Opium (1923). During his recovery, he produced some of his major works –the plays Orpheus (1926) and The Infernal Machine (1934), the novel Children of the Game (1929), and his first film, Le Sang d’un Poete (Blood of a Poet, 1930).

Cocteau’s films, most of which he wrote and directed, were especially important in introducing surrealism into the French cinema. Several of them –particularly La belle et la bete (Beauty and the Beast, 1946), Orphee (Orpheus, 1950), and Les Enfants Terribles (1950) –have come to be regarded as modern film classics.

Despite his achievements in virtually all literary and artistic fields, Cocteau insisted that he was primarily a poet and that all his work was poetry. He died on October 11th, 1963.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Overdiversified", June 24, 2007

By	Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

After seeing many dry lectures recorded onto DVDs, it was refreshing to see a documentary that tried to keep the viewer's attention. In this work, still photos of Cocteau would show him increasing in size or have his eyes moving. The pages of his texts were portrayed as if they were walls in a maze or waves on an ocean. This abstract dynamic is similar to the art house films on Najinsky, an associate of Cocteau, and "Frida" about the Mexican artist. Cocteau was a master of all trades, similar to Byron and Michelangelo. He knew it and contemporaries asked him about it. Many documentaries suppress the homosexual identity or activities of their subjects in order not to upset modern, homophobic audiences. This work may have done the opposite. They only mention Cocteau's loves with men, but Notable Names Database lists him as bisexual and two women with whom he was involved. Unlike documentaries for Anglophone American audiences, the narrator here always gave the French titles for Cocteau's works, not English translations. Further, pages of the recorded text were in French, again not English. I am most familiar with Cocteau's filmic work and I would say not much time is spent on them here. I think those who love Dali's work and enjoy documentaries about Dali, would also enjoy and benefit from learning about Cocteau.