Jean Cocteau:Father of Avant-Garde
A Profile of the Artist/ Playwright/ Filmmaker's The Human Voice, The Sound of Silence, Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, Intimate Relations, Les Enfants Terrible, Orpheus
Aug 7, 2006
To understand Cocteau, Number Two in Les Fab Five series, one must delve into all aspects of his inexhaustible creativity.
Jean Cocteau was the supreme multi-tasker avec panache mastering every arts discipline - painter, poet, novelist, and musician, set designer, actor, director, publisher, avant garde film pioneer, and noted playwright.
Chigago's Journeymen Theatre Company's La Livre Blanc or The White Book and Broadway's 1995 revival Indiscretions are glowing tributes to Cocteau's work while New York's Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre speaks for itself.
London's Trafalgar Studios is currently presenting Cocteau double bill The Human Voice (La Voix Humaine) and
The Sound of Silence / Le Bel Indifférent to Aug 12.
Le Bel Indifférent was specially written by Cocteau for Edith Piaf who performed it in 1940. Both pieces deal with love - "a curse, a trap and a terrible need."
Cocteau's obsession with unrequited love, forbidden lust, the dream state, narcissism, and The Bourgeoisie began at the impressionable age of 10. His father committed suicide while his mother had a love for the glitterati of Parisian culture which inspired and intrigued her son for life.
Like Jean Anouilh , Cocteau also had a penchant for Greek myth, Antigone, Oedipus, Sophocles, Bacchus but particularly Orpheus.
He wrote the play Orphee in 1926, and then adapted it for film in 1950. In 1959 he wrote The Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphee) which he translated into two screenplays and a 1960 film.
Cocteau was a rebel and age 15, after being expelled from private school, he found dangerous acceptance living as a gay alias in the 'red light district' of Marseilles.
At 17, ingratiating himself into theatre circles and inspired by gay Parisian thespian/ mentor Edouard de Max , Cocteau wrote poetry all the while perfecting the art of cultivating the avant garde scene.
From Ballets Russes notorious impresario Sergei Diaghilev to Russian composer Igor Stravinsky to avant-visonary Pablo Picasso to French minmalist composer Erik Satie, the Cocteau concept was the great catalyst.
With Picasso as set and cubist costume designer and Satie scoring the musical "noise", Cocteau presented Satie's controversial industrial ballet Parade with choreography by Russia's Leonide Massine .
Though the critics lambasted it, (and Satie went to jail!) this trinity was the beginning of Les Six and Cocteau's rise to celebrity status as timeless father of avant-garde through dance, art, writing, theatre and film.
Cocteau's film include 1930's Blood of a Poet/ La Sang d'un Poete , 1946's Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et Le Bete), 1948's Les Parents Terrible(Intimate Relations), 1949's Les Enfants Terrible (Incorrigible Children), and 1950's Orphee(Orpheus)
Jean Cocteau's New Wave vision continues to inspire the world's most creative minds from the ground-breaking cinema of Abel Gance , Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut to modern surrealists David Lynch, David Cronenburg, and Tim Burton.
Cocteau's paintings are exhibited worldwide and his soul stirring poetry, writings, and musical collaborations intoxicate from generation to generation.
In Feb 2007, The Prague State Opera presents a revival of Francis Poulenc's surrealist opera in one act La Voix Humaine,/ The Human Voice ) libretto written naturalment, by Jean Cocteau.
