"I am a lie who always speaks the truth."

Our final European film director is the reverie-inducing Jean Cocteau.

Cocteau worked as a poet, novelist, dramaturge, designer, artist and even helped create some ballet along with writing a libretto or two.  Oh, and he made films.  All in all, something of a layabout....

I jest, of course.  Recounting Cocteau's achievements in even a few of his chosen art forms would take far longer than I have to discuss him, especially as I've only chipped away at the top of the iceberg myself.  He is perhaps best known today for his beautifully filmed rendition of Beauty and the Beast (1946), and for the Orpheus trilogy (The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and The Testament of Orpheus (1960) ).

My first exposure to his work was while in college.  A friend in an avant-garde jazz band invited me to a screening that his group would score of a Man Ray short and Cocteau's Blood of a Poet.  It was an immensely enjoyable evening, but what struck me most was the reaction of the crowd to Poet.  Though Cocteau's camera tricks were easy for me to decipher, it was wonderful how these fairly simple in-camera effects still drew gasps of surprise from the crowd.  If anything, it proved that it's not the complexity of the trick, but rather the simple elegance of how you pull it off.

Cocteau Cocktail

While sitting in a booth in a pub, I'm afraid that I became quite enamored with the fixture holding the globe light that illuminated our table. The small hand jutting out from the fixture reminded me of the living fixtures that lined the walls of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast...only, the smaller size of this tiny fist gave an even more fairy tale air to it. My rendering, however, due entirely to the shadows that fell across it, looks more like the fist of some mad scientist from some other world, as drawn by Jack Kirby.