I didn’t really know what to expect before watching “La Belle et la bete.”  I knew that it was supposed to follow the main plot of the familiar fairy tale, but that it was also supposed to be more than that, with magical effects and deeper meanings.  After reading the review by Roger Ebert, I was anxious to see the “astonishing effects” that an early film could have and to see how the Beast’s castle was depicted.
    I didn’t really like the way the Beast appeared. At first I thought it was the fangs that bothered me, but I think that the Beast in the animated story has fangs as well.  Maybe it was just because this beast wasn’t animated.  His eyes were also disturbing.  I thought the Beast’s castle was especially creepy and haunting in the film.  I know I wouldn’t want to be in a place that anticipated my every move!  If the arms and statues in the castle were remnants of real people was not revealed, but left to the viewer’s imagination.  They, like most of the other things in the film, were explained away by the Beast’s magic, in true fairy tale form.  While watching the film, I got caught up in the story and thought little of the special effects until afterwards.  When leaving, I realized how extraordinary and convincing they really were for a film of that time.
    I agree with Ebert in that Cocteau’s film “is not just a jolly comic musical, but deals, as all fairy tales do, with what we truly dread and desire.”  Beauty’s sisters dreaded poverty; her father dreaded the loss of Beauty.  Avenant dreaded the loss of Beauty also, but in a much more violent, selfish way.  The complexity of the film was found in the desire between Beauty and the Beast.  Beauty at first dreaded her own desire for something as horrendous as the Beast, but in the end was happily surprised that her own desire had turned him into something that she could look upon.  Cocteau does an amazing job of capturing the emotions and desires of all the characters involved in his adaptation of the fairy tale.