Lorna Irvine is enchanted the performance sponsored by EIF.
Poet, artist and film maker Jean Cocteau once said, 'The movie screen is the true mirror-reflecting the flesh and blood of my dreams.’ So who better to score such somnambulant imagery than celebrated composer Phillip Glass?
The teaming up of the legendary US avant-gardist's ensemble playing a live accompaniment with Cocteau's 1946 classic is an inspired pairing and does not disappoint—from the insistent, chiming keyboards in the opening titles to the dramatic, brooding climax.
Underpinning the film's symbols of paranoia (hands holding candles reach out of walls, eyes are watching around each corner—even the busts on the walls ) and mistrust, Glass dips seamlessly in and out of Gothic: noir harpsichord .
The only problem is a slight loss in translation from French script to English libretto with so many words to cram in, but as it is a witty script it doesn't really require a perfect metre. Gregory Purnhagen, who is a long-term collaborator with Glass, provides a large, robust vocal nonetheless.
Andrew Sterman's breathy woodwind theme for Belle (played on screen by Josette Day, beautifully sung by Hai-Ting Chinn) is lovely and brings added poignancy to Belle's nascent affair with the leonine creature (Jean Marais on-screen), whose soul has seduced her, and there is a playfulness throughout with sighs, giggles and birdsong within the score matching Cocteau's sly humour.
A truly
spectacular event and an International Festival highlight. Cocteau himself
would have been proud: his surreal, disquieting but beautiful night visions
made flesh.
La Belle et la Bete’s run has finished.
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