Jean Cocteau (review)

This is an excellent and long overdue English-language study of Cocteau's cinema. Williams's approach, as with many of the other studies in this series, moves beyond the well-trodden path of auteurism to address the films in their aesthetic and socio-cultural contexts, as well as examining genre, specific cinematic techniques and Cocteau's collaborative relationships (especially with Jean Marais and Edouard Dermit). Williams considers Cocteau's passionate interest in the possibilities of the cinematic medium — 'le cinématographe' to use Cocteau's own phrase — possibilities relating to movement, 'space-time' and rhythm (as evidenced, for example, by his fondness for reverse-motion, to which Williams devotes a chapter) as well as a related interest in representing the materiality of the body. This study demonstrates the close alliance in Cocteau's films between poetry and the real, figured most particularly (though not exclusively) through the representation of the male body. The author, whose work on gender and queer theory is well known, considers the relevance of a range of theoretical perspectives to Cocteau's work, from the psychoanalytic (for instance, Susan Hayward's discussion of the poetics of desire and the [de]construction of gender in La Belle et la bête, p. 145) to the material relation between spectator and film (for instance, Steven Shaviro's account of embodied spectatorship, p. 167), and the accusation of misogyny which Williams finds to be well founded. What emerges from these debates is the necessity of viewing the films as 'multi-cinema' (p. 195) — in all their permutations and in terms of Cocteau's own preoccupations regarding 'le cinématographe'. There are occasions when the clarity of argument could benefit from greater attention to detail. On occasion, intriguing examples are given but are not fully elaborated (e.g. on p. 68, the description of a Méliès short from the 1910s, where a character is filmed by a television company). Some discussions could benefit from more detailed explanation and more specific textual examples (for instance, of Lee Edelman's account of visual anality in Rear Window, pp. 180-81, which comes across as somewhat abstruse and even tenuous in relation to the meticulous and persuasive discussion of anal erotics in Cocteau's own films in Chapter 6). However, the analyses of Cocteau's films are exemplary in their attention to textual detail, critical and scholarly engagement, and also in their appreciation of the inventive charm and wit of Cocteau's films.

The book, as ever with this series, is generally well presented, with few typographical errors, though there is an occasional grammatical clumsiness that hinders understanding (for instance, regarding Fischlin's analysis of La Belle et la bête, p. 145; and on p. 146, n. 3). The illustrations are disappointingly rather small and dark, to the point that details in some medium and longer shots are difficult to make out. However, these are small criticisms given the achievements of the author, who has engaged both critically and fondly with Cocteau's work to demonstrate how the artist's different brand of 'poetic realism' looks beyond (behind?) the phallic economy of 1940s and 1950s French cinema, and offers a cinematic manifesto for visionary creation.