Cocteau was briefly prolific as a filmmaker after the war and Beauty and the Beast – this came out a couple months after The Two-Headed Eagle, then Orpheus premiered just over a year later. It’s got smooth camera and nice lighting, if that’s what you’re looking for, but feels too stagy.

Belle and the Beast are back, human and in love, but his overprotective parents are out to stop their marriage. Marais’s dad (Marcel André) is having an affair with his own son’s belle, to teach them a lesson or something, worrier mom (Yvonne de Bray of Eagle) has health problems, and aunt Leo (fashion icon Gabrielle Dorziat) is either helping or fouling everything up. Everybody’s overdoing it until mom can’t take it anymore and does herself in.

The Most Manipulative Family of All Time:

The two sides of Aunt Leo: