I’ve loved Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film of La Belle et la Bête since first I saw it. Loved it, been thrilled, haunted and in thrall to it. I never tire of watching it, sometimes quipping that it’s the film to throw in my coffin to keep me company in the afterlife I don’t believe in.
For the longest time I’d been wondering how best to honour and homage the film. To begin with I toyed with the idea of making a series of paintings, but then together with Joe Pearson at Design for Today – who published Hansel & Gretel last year – hatched a plan to produce an illustrated book in collaboration with the poet Olivia McCannon, who I’d been longing to work with. Joe, Olivia and I are in agreement that neither a straight adaptation of the screenplay nor a picture book version of the film could do justice to our ambitions. We’ve opted instead for what we’re referring to as a reinvention of Cocteau’s masterpiece characterised less as a translation, than a ‘dream’ of the film.
I’ve filled drawing books with preparatory material. Characters and places have been exhaustively explored in order to find versions that will work to best advantage in illustrations. Iconic visual aspects of Cocteau’s Beauty and her Beast In their Christian Bérard costumes have been pored over, their shapes, textures and design characteristics examined, simplified and reconfigured so as to work graphically on the page. I’ve built maquettes and three-dimensional model sets to help with my compositions.
With the groundwork done, I begin the real work of construction. There’s no dummy yet, but I estimate forty illustrations. Time to get busy!
Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
Hello,
If you don’t mind a mundane question, could you please tell both the name and type of the small black pins you used to attach the parts of the maquette together ?
(Are they the type that fold back flat on the reverse, or are they just pinning the figure of the Beast to an underlay ? I’ve been looking for something like the first type for some silhouette figures, but have forgotten the name, and the kind I remember had much larger heads and weren’t as good as what you seem to have here).
Really lovely work !
The pins may be found online under the generic term ‘brads’. They’ve been developed by the hobby industry for people who do ‘paper-crafting’. So try ‘paper-crafting brads’ as a search term and see where that carries you. Paper-crafting has caught on in the UK, though many of the products for it were developed in the US where it’s been historically very popular, hence the term ‘brad’, which is American. (In the UK these would once have been called ‘paper-fasteners’, which is what you’re remembering. Usually made of brass and quite big, and found in office supply shops and stationers.) The paper-crafting ‘brads’ come in all colours and assortments. Aesthetically I prefer black, but there’s no shortage of choice.
I hope this helps.
Did you ever read the book Cocteau wrote about making this film? It’s enlightening and a joy to discover if you have not: Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film by Jean Cocteau, 1972.
Thank you, yes, and moreover it’s very much one of the underlying guides to the work I’m producing right now. Wonderful creative insights throughout.
Dear Clive, DELIGHTED for the three of you and looking forward to all the creativity to come, extra welcome in these ‘barren’ times…
A Dream Within a Dream – E. A Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
Love as ever and always
Bern x
Oh Bern, what a perfect choice. You remember the crush I had on Poe’s poetry when were at school.
XXX
That shot from the film just gives me goosepimples! Love those preparatory sketches, so vivid and alive. I’m really looking forward to the finished book.
Clive, It has been too long (it’s Sean in Philadelphia). I am so glad to see you return to this tale. I cannot think of a more appropriate time in history to examine its themes. Cocteau began another film, Blood of the Poet, with the line, “every poem is a coat of arms; it must be deciphered.” That is a line that has stuck with me as I remember that film with its dada-ist imagery. In a way, your preparatory sketch reminded me of this coat of arms, with various visual elements drawings us into this fierce tragedy in the face of love. All that is encompassed is to be revealed in the language of visual poetry. I’m looking forward to where this visual journey takes you.
Hello Sean in Philadelphia! Lovely to hear from you. Glad that you’re keeping safe in these strange times.
I’ve always collaborated best with poets, and I have a brilliant one undertaking this adventure with me, our first together. I treasure not just her snippets of text as they emerge, but the wonderful discussions we have about the ideas we’re moving toward. She’s an inspiration to me, just as Cocteau and his team are.
I won’t pretend that it’s not a big challenge, taking something brilliant, lyric and iconic made in one form, and homaging it in another. But then I have always loved a challenge.
This will be my favorite work from Clive; I can already see it in the sketches and colors–and in Clive’s descriptions of his process. Sending Clive happiest trans-Atlantic vibes for weeks or months of inspired work.
Hello Jack. Thank you for your good wishes. I return mine to you. Stay safe in these troubled times.
Dear Clive:
I still have not been able to watch the film. It has been waiting for a while on my incoming tray. I told you I did not like Jean Marais, but after your piece on Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête here at the Artlog, I ordered the film…
Now, I have time again; too much time. And I shall watch it in order to prepare for your version of the story.
Every time there is a new book with your vision of a tale, the tale gets better and better. I know I am going to love it. It shall be a worth the wait. Like it always is.
Love from Madrid
Dearest Maria.
Please don’t force yourself to watch something you won’t enjoy. The experience of watching Testament of Orpheus and La Belle et la Bête in a double bill at about age thirteen years of age, was an experience that marked me for life. Both were hugely significant in my creative development, but it’s the latter film that nests in my heart. I imagine my response to it was the result of many things particular to my frame of mind at first exposure. But while I love it, I don’t believe I would have had it in me to make a response to it before now. Working on several books over the past few years, and particularly on Hansel & Gretel for Design for Today, has brought me to the right place to undertake the challenge. I have wonderful collaborators in Joe and Olivia. This feels the right moment for the adventure.
You are much in our minds. Peter and I send our love. XXX