Jean Cocteau
1948
105 minutes
This is one of Cocteau's more boring and mundane films, but remember what that's measured against. Once again, Cocteau's favorite pretty boy, Jean Marais, has the lead role playing a thirty-five year old gay man playing a twenty-two year old straight boy. Fuck it, whatever, it's pretty much a film of a stage play anyway, and there's no reason that kind of casting shouldn't be allowed. We're all French here. He and his dad turn out to be banging the same girl, which makes things awkward to say the least, and hijinks ensue. This one is light on the special effects but still pretty heavy on the sordid drama. And there are some nice cinematography touches since Cocteau is pretty much a delightful genius.
Complaining that this film is stagey is like complaining that Alfred Hitchcock's Rope is stagey. If you don't like plays, skip it.
For all your arts consumption, you actually don't get out to many straight-up plays. Not even Shakespeare productions. You tend to enjoy them, it just doesn't happen as often as it should. And a lot of local plays aren't always very well promoted or they are in neighborhoods that aren't convenient for you to get to. One exception of course is a small playhouse in the neighborhood north of your own that is known for putting on rather odd productions, with a few classics mixed in. (You recently missed a Pinter two-hander that they did, to your dismay. You wanted to see it but you've been too frazzled and demoralized lately to see much of anything and it conflicted with other things that were on your schedule.)
The last major one you attended at that theater company was an adaptation of the novel The Starlight Barking by Dodie Smith, which was an utterly bonkers sequel to 101 Dalmatians (same author!) where the dalmatians wake up one day to find they have gained abilities like telepathy and flight and for some reason all the humans on earth have mysteriously fallen under some sleeping sickness. This includes Cruella DeVil, whom they initially blame for the dilemma. The true culprit ends up being some sort of Lovecraftian dog deity from beyond the stars who wants to rapture all the dogs of Earth to join them in jabbering praises to the great old ones in some sort of celestial canine choir. Disney decided never to make a film of this sequel, of course, since it likely would have ended up too stagey as well, so it was left to a local theater company to blaze a trail forward on adapting it.
Time to choose something different: