MovieChat Forums > La Belle et la Bête (1947) Discussion > technical question

technical question

posted 19 years ago by colonelschwartz
9 replies | jump to latest

this may be obvious to more experienced filmmakers, but i was just wondering how cocteau achieved the semi slow motion effect in the scene where belle enters the castle and she is "running" up the stairs. it almost feels like it was not shot in slow motion and she was just moving slowly, or maybe it was just slowed down a little bit. anyway, can someone tell me how cocteau did that? also in the scene where the jewels "jump" into the person's hands, it looks like they reversed it, but i was wondering how they achieved the effect of the jewels moving by themselves with no cgi or advanced special effects.
thanks!

ben

[–] thatcat1960-1 19 years ago

From re-watching the movie with the commentary from Sir Christopher Frayling I gather that the film is deliberatly slowed to emphasize Belle's entrance into the enchanted castle. I also think that you are correct about the reverse "jump" of the jewels into the beast's hands--which is mentioned in Arthur Knight's commentary. Amazing, what was accomplished before cgi, isn't it? What do you think of the scene where the beast carries Belle across the threshhold of her bedroom, and her everyday apparel becomes finery of silks and jewels?

[–] 19 years ago

[deleted]

[–] garberpog 19 years ago

I loved it, and found it eerie and powerful; though it might have been simple editing, it showed that she had begun the strange process of becoming part of the magic world, being transformed.

[–] thatcat1960-1 19 years ago

Yes, what an elegant way to say it! I have been haunted by that scene for years, ever since I first saw it in a film study class in high school--more years than I'd care to admit, lol!

[–] keith2366 18 years ago

I don't know anything about the making of a film but from years of watching them
I have to guess that Cocteau must have experimented lots or the fact that he was
an artist helped him understand human movements. You can't just shoot film and
then reverse it for effects. I have seen this done in a few movies and it only
seems to come off well done in Cocteau films. In one of the Orpheus films
he shot himself pulling the petals off a flower and it is reversed in the film so
that he is putting the petals back on. It is well done. Almost all of his reversed
effects are extremely well done.

[–] Bastardized 18 years ago

i think that at that time you could just rool the camera film slower to create a slow motion and to reverse a seen you had to shot it, cut the scene on the photogram, turn it around and glue it back reversed. My question for this film is how did he hide those people on the side of the fire place, we cannot even know if it was a real fireplace

[–] Feesimple 18 years ago

However he achieved it, it is the best visual moment in the film. Fantastic eerie dreamlike atmosphere.

All I can say is hats off to Cocteau, especially for 1946. Simply brilliant.

[–] adalbertus 18 years ago

This thread reminds me of something said of this film by, I believe, Pauline Kael: that it stands as a testimony of what might be achieved in film when a poet applies his genius to the art form. In short, he achieves the most striking, even electrifying, results with the simplest means. CGI couldn't even begin to express or even hint at what Cocteau realizes here.

[–] dreadpirate2 18 years ago

ITA. I think the effects here are much more believable than CGI *because* we generally know how they were done, and all the props are real. For me, CGI doesn't produce a sense of illusion, because I know that the city or fantastic character doesn't exist the way a scale model or costume actually exists.

I did accidentally kill her father when I went to pick her up for the first date. AWKWARD!