Jean Cocteau: Difference between revisions
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==Later Years== |
==Later Years== |
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In the |
In the 1930's, Cocteau had an unlikely affair with Princess [[Nathalie Paley]], the beautiful daughter of a [[Romanov]] grand duke and herself a fashion-plate, sometimes actress, model, and former wife of couturier [[Lucien Lelong]]. She became pregnant. To Cocteau's distress and Paley's life-long regret, the fetus was [[abortion|aborted]] due to the intervention of [[Marie-Laure de Noailles]], the eccentric arts patron who had loved Cocteau as a young woman and was determined to ruin his new romance. Cocteau's longest-lasting relationship was with the handsome French actor [[Jean Marais]], whom he cast in ''Beauty and the Beast.'' Cocteau is also said to have carried a relationship with [[Panama Al Brown]], a boxer he managed during the 1930's [http://www.outsports.com/history/gayboxer.htm.|1]. |
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In [[1940]] ''Le Bel Indifférent'', Cocteau's play written for and starring [[Édith Piaf]], was enormously successful. He also worked with [[Pablo Picasso|Picasso]] on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community. He struggled with [[opium]] addiction for most of his adult life and was openly [[gay]], though he had a few brief and complicated affairs with women. He published a considerable amount of work criticising [[homophobia]]. |
In [[1940]], ''Le Bel Indifférent'', Cocteau's play written for and starring [[Édith Piaf]], was enormously successful. He also worked with [[Pablo Picasso|Picasso]] on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community. He struggled with an [[opium]] addiction for most of his adult life and was openly [[gay]], though he had a few brief and complicated affairs with women. He published a considerable amount of work criticising [[homophobia]]. |
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Cocteau's [[film]]s, the bulk of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing Surrealism into French cinema and influenced to a certain degree the upcoming French New Wave genre. |
Cocteau's [[film]]s, the bulk of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing Surrealism into French cinema and influenced to a certain degree the upcoming French New Wave genre. |
Revision as of 23:25, 6 February 2006
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Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (July 5, 1889 – October 11, 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. He was born at Maisons-Laffitte, France, a small town near Paris. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim.
Early Years
Despite his achievements in virtually all literary and artistic fields, Cocteau insisted that he was primarily a poet and that all his work was poetry. As an important exponent of Surrealism, he had great influence on the work of others, including the group of composer friends in Montparnasse known as Les Six. The word Surrealism was coined, in fact, by Guillaume Apollinaire to describe Cocteau's 1917 collaboration with Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso, and Léonide Massine Parade. Self-proclaimed Surrealism leader André Breton, nonetheless, declared Cocteau a "notorious false poet, a versifier who happens to debase rather than to elevate everything he touches." (Breton, 1953).
Raymond Radiguet
In 1918 he met the 15-year-old poet Raymond Radiguet, with whom he had an intense and often stormy relationship until the latter's premature death while on a trip together. See Historical pederastic relationships
Radiguet's death was an immense blow to Cocteau and led to the writer's subsequent opium binge, a drug which he would use abuse again for several months, and which profoundly inspired his works and imagery. His most notable book, Les Enfants Terribles, was written in a week during a strenuous opium weaning.
Later Years
In the 1930's, Cocteau had an unlikely affair with Princess Nathalie Paley, the beautiful daughter of a Romanov grand duke and herself a fashion-plate, sometimes actress, model, and former wife of couturier Lucien Lelong. She became pregnant. To Cocteau's distress and Paley's life-long regret, the fetus was aborted due to the intervention of Marie-Laure de Noailles, the eccentric arts patron who had loved Cocteau as a young woman and was determined to ruin his new romance. Cocteau's longest-lasting relationship was with the handsome French actor Jean Marais, whom he cast in Beauty and the Beast. Cocteau is also said to have carried a relationship with Panama Al Brown, a boxer he managed during the 1930's [1].
In 1940, Le Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for and starring Édith Piaf, was enormously successful. He also worked with Picasso on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community. He struggled with an opium addiction for most of his adult life and was openly gay, though he had a few brief and complicated affairs with women. He published a considerable amount of work criticising homophobia.
Cocteau's films, the bulk of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing Surrealism into French cinema and influenced to a certain degree the upcoming French New Wave genre.
Cocteau is best known for his 1929 novel Les enfants terribles, the 1929 play Les parents terribles, and the 1946 film, Beauty and the Beast.
Awards & Recognitions
In 1955 he was made a member of the Académie française and The Royal Academy of Belgium.
During his life Cocteau was commander of the Legion of Honor, Member of the Mallarmé Academy, German Academy (Berlin), American Academy, Mark Twain (U.S.A) Academy, Honorary President of the Cannes film festival, Honorary President of the France-Hungary Association and President of the jazz Academy and of the Academy of the Disc.
Cocteau died in 1963 at the age of 74 and is buried in Chapelle St. Blaise Des Simples, Milly La Foret, Essonne, France.
Filmography, as director
- Le testament d'Orphée (1960)
- L'Amour sous l'électrode (1955)
- La villa Santo-Sospir (1952)
- Coriolan (1950)
- Orphée (1949)
- Les parents terribles (1948)
- L'aigle à deux têtes (1947)
- La belle et la bête (1946)
- Le sang d'un poète (1930)
- Jean Cocteau fait du cinéma (1925)
Books by Jean Cocteau
Selected works:
- Cocteau, Jean, The Art of Cinema, edited by André Bernard and Claude Gauteur, translated by Robin Buss, Marion Boyars, London, 1988
- Cocteau, Jean, Diary of an Unknown, translated by Jesse Browner, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1988
- Cocteau, Jean, The Eagle Has Two Heads, adapted by Ronald Duncan, Vision Press Ltd., Great Britain, 1947
- Cocteau, Jean, The Holy Terrors (Les enfants terribles), translated by Rosamond Lehmann, New Directions Publishing Corp., New York, 1957
- Cocteau, Jean, The Human Voice, translated by Carl Wildman, Vision Press Ltd., Great Britain, 1947
- Cocteau, Jean, The Infernal Machine And Other Plays, translated by W.A. Auden, E.E. Cummings, Dudley Fitts, Albert Bermel, Mary C. Hoeck, and John K. Savacool, New Directions Books, New York, 1963
- Cocteau, Jean, Les parents terribles, new translation by Jeremy Sams, Nick Hern Books, London, 1994
- Cocteau, Jean, The White Book (Le livre blanc), translated by Margaret Crosland, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1989
- Cocteau, Jean, Le coq et l'arlequin: Notes autour de la musique - avec un portrait de l'Auteur et deux monogrammes par P. Picasso, Paris, Éditions de la Sirène, 1918
- Cocteau, Jean, Opium: The Diary of a Cure, translated by Margaret Crosland and Sinclair Road, Grove Press Inc., New York, 1958
External links
- About Cocteau :
- Biography:
- Graphic arts :
- fr en : http://www.cocteau-art.com/
- Poetry and music :
- en : http://www.ubu.com/sound/cocteau.html reading poetry backed by the Dan Parrish Jazz Orchestra
Other references
- See also references in Les Six article.
- Breton, André (1953). La clé des champs, p.77. Paris: Éditions du Sagittaire.