Alex Farba-Deleon at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival. It's a sunny Valentines Day in Berlin, Day number 9, as the festival goes into wind down mode with a new edition of Beauty and the Beast. Two quick obituarial notes; the passing of two show business legends this week: Sid Caesar, 92, the great comedian of the early b/w television days and Shirley Temple, 85, child star of the thirties who was the highest paid actress in Hollywood in 1937 at the age of nine. At the height of her career bouncy dimply Shirley was a dancing singing flirtatious little pre-Lolita who brightened up the dark days of the Great Depression for Americans in the thirties.
"La Belle et la Bête" (Beauty and the Beast) is more or less a remake of the famous French film of the same name made immediately after the war in 1946 by surrealism maestro Jean Cocteau starring his beautifully handsome boyfriend Jean Marais. While the Cocteau master piece was a fantasmagorical dream in black and white, the current picture is an overinflated special effects nightmare in overrich color in which "Belle" (Léa Seydoux) is neither very beautiful nor very seductive, and "Bête" (tough guy actor Vincent Cassel) is far more beastly than the sensitive Prince Charming of Jean Marais. The momentous special effects actually overwhelm the story and ultimately bombard the viewer into a state of numbness. Director Christophe Gans is basically a horror specialist and has turned this famous French fairy tale into a horror spectacular that screams out loud for a 3-D treatment. Assessment; aaaaaarrghh! GIve it four stars out of ten for some dazzling lens work and the sincere effort on the part of the actors in the face of a hopeless task.
"La Belle et la Bête" (Beauty and the Beast) is more or less a remake of the famous French film of the same name made immediately after the war in 1946 by surrealism maestro Jean Cocteau starring his beautifully handsome boyfriend Jean Marais. While the Cocteau master piece was a fantasmagorical dream in black and white, the current picture is an overinflated special effects nightmare in overrich color in which "Belle" (Léa Seydoux) is neither very beautiful nor very seductive, and "Bête" (tough guy actor Vincent Cassel) is far more beastly than the sensitive Prince Charming of Jean Marais. The momentous special effects actually overwhelm the story and ultimately bombard the viewer into a state of numbness. Director Christophe Gans is basically a horror specialist and has turned this famous French fairy tale into a horror spectacular that screams out loud for a 3-D treatment. Assessment; aaaaaarrghh! GIve it four stars out of ten for some dazzling lens work and the sincere effort on the part of the actors in the face of a hopeless task.