Metacritic Film

Beauty and the Beast (re-release)

Starring Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély, Nane Germon, and Michel Auclair

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Cowboy Pictures
Fantasy
93 minutes | B / W
France
Released In Theaters August 16, 2002

Jean Cocteau's 1946 classic, newly restored to its original glorious black and white splendor. (Film Forum)

WRITTEN BY
Jean Cocteau (also story and dialogue)
Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (story)

DIRECTED BY
Jean Cocteau

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

92 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 TV Guide Staff (Not credited)
A masterpiece. It is a credit to Cocteau's genius (and to that of his collaborators) that he has taken the unreal world of a fairy tale and made it as real as the world around us.
100 Chicago Sun-Times
Cocteau, a poet and surrealist, was not making a "children's film" but was adapting a classic French tale that he felt had a special message after the suffering of World War II: Anyone who has an unhappy childhood may grow up to be a Beast.
100 Chicago Tribune
Beautifully remastered and containing Cocteau's long-unseen special prologue and credits -- is as much a feat of feverish delight as it was in the dark days of Vichy and WWII.
100 Dallas Observer
So enchanting it takes your breath away.
100 Portland Oregonian
One of the great marvels of the medium, a film that you cannot miss if you hope to be literate in cinema -- or, indeed, if you seek acquaintance with the great works of modern times.
100 Christian Science Monitor
The timeless fairy tale about a young woman who agrees to dwell with a mysterious monster, as interpreted in 1946 by one of cinema's most brilliant visual stylists and mythmakers.
40 Village Voice Michael Miller
Viewers must get in touch with their inner child to fall for Belle's eventual love for Beast. The film seems somewhat aware of this, casting an ambiguous hue on its happily-ever-after conclusion.

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