Beauty and the Beast: Diary of a Film

Nothing to say except EXTRAORDINARY A phenomenal insight into both Cocteau and the this amazing film! Love it and shared with many.

A wonderful book. "Diary..." details Cocteau's seemingly insurmountable obstacles in creating one of the greatest-ever fantasy films. Includes plenty of on-set photos. Compulsively wonderful reading, and highly recommended for the price.

I wish I had read carefully that the book was a translation from French before ordering. Still, the story behind the making of the most important film of French cinema is amazing and makes appreciating it more complex and layered. Highly recommend.

Some have found Cocteau's litany of illnesses that he and others suffered while filming "Beauty and the Beast" tedious and skipped over them as seemingly irrelevant. Unfortunately, those who do so may miss the entire point of Cocteau's masochistic esthetic, namely, the necessity for the artist to suffer and triumph over all adversity for the sake of his art. That suffering is part and parcel of his art, suffering is art, just as "Beauty and the Beast" suffered during the filming and triumphed as a lasting work of art. Cocteau's suffering at the time mirrored the enormous technical difficulties encountered while making the film. The entire surreal struggle of Cocteau and of others involved in the film is wonderfully captured in his journal and any serious student of either Cocteau or the film will profit by reading it.