Les Parents Terribles

Jean Cocteau adapts his own play for this 1948 drama, a chamber piece featuring five characters in tangled relationships played by the performers who originated the roles on stage in 1938. Jean Marais and Josette Day (the stars of Cocteau's 1946 masterpiece Beauty and the Beast) are young lovers Michel and Madeline. He is the spoiled, childish son in a family of impoverished aristocrats living in the crumbling remnants of affluence, and she is the kept woman of an older man, who turns out to be Michel's own father Georges (Marcel André), a would-be inventor in a loveless marriage. When Michel announces his plans to marry, his mother (Yvonne de Bray)—who babies and indulges her son and is terrified of abandonment—plots with Georges and her sister Léo (Gabrielle Dorziat), who is Georges’ former lover and the family's sole economic support, to break up the romance. It's a modern Greek tragedy as melancholy farce, more sad than funny, and Cocteau has a rueful affection for his characters even as he reveals them to be petty and pathetic. The action is confined to oppressive, cluttered spaces and Cocteau even comments on its theatrical qualities ("If there weren’t situations like this, there’d be no plays," remarks one character), but his direction is smooth and elegant and his images carry an offhanded beauty. This fine drama, also known under the title The Storm Within, played American theaters in 2018 in a new restoration and makes its U.S. home video debut with extras including an introduction by film historian Richard Pena, an interview with Cocteau's assistant director Claude Pinoteau, and camera tests. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)