Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, illustrator, and filmmaker. An unclassifiable figure of the avant-garde, he worked across every art form and embodies the spirit of modern creativity in the early 20th century.
Jean Cocteau(1889 — 1963)
Jean Cocteau
France
6 min read
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« Film is a modern form of writing whose ink is light.»
« Tact in audacity lies in knowing how far one can go too far.»
Key Facts
- 1889: born in Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris
- 1929: publication of the novel Les Enfants terribles
- 1930: directs his first film, The Blood of a Poet
- 1946: release of the film Beauty and the Beast
- 1955: elected to the Académie française; died in 1963
Works & Achievements
Ballet created with Satie, Picasso and the Ballets Russes; a founding work of the avant-garde and the origin of the word “surrealism.”
An aesthetic manifesto championing a clear French music freed from German and Impressionist influences.
A cult novel about a brother and sister sealed off in their own world, one of Cocteau's most widely read works.
A play for a single actress speaking on the telephone, now a classic of the stage and adapted into an opera by Poulenc.
Cocteau's first film, a dreamlike exploration of artistic creation and of passing through the mirror.
A hit family drama, a model of interwar theater, which Cocteau himself brought to the screen.
A filmed fairy tale that became a masterpiece of fantasy cinema, famous for its sets and magical visual effects.
A film transposing the myth of Orpheus into modern Paris, where mirrors open onto the world of the dead.
Anecdotes
Around 1912, the young Cocteau asked Sergei Diaghilev, director of the Ballets Russes, how he might please him. Diaghilev shot back: “Astonish me!” Cocteau would make this phrase the motto of his entire life, and in 1917 he created the ballet Parade to rise to the challenge.
On 18 May 1917, at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Parade brought together the music of Erik Satie, the sets of Pablo Picasso, and the choreography of Léonide Massine. The score mixed in the sounds of a typewriter and a siren: the audience cried scandal. In the programme, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire used the word “surrealism.”
In 1936, the newspaper Paris-Soir sent Cocteau to retrace the journey of Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne. Accompanied by his friend Marcel Khill, he circled the globe within the deadline and even met Charlie Chaplin aboard an ocean liner.
After the sudden death of his young friend, the writer Raymond Radiguet, in 1923, Cocteau sank into grief and opium addiction. He underwent several detoxification cures and turned this ordeal into a book illustrated with his own drawings, Opium (1930).
In 1950, at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, a friend lent him the Villa Santo Sospir. Cocteau began by drawing on a single wall, then could not stop: he covered walls and ceilings with mythological figures. He said he had “tattooed” the house.
Primary Sources
Tact in audacity lies in knowing how far you can go too far.
A poet always has too many words in his vocabulary, a painter too many colors on his palette, a musician too many notes on his keyboard.
Everything we do in life, even love, we do aboard an express train hurtling toward death. To smoke opium is to step off the moving train.
Children believe what we tell them and do not question it. I ask of you a little of that childlike innocence and, to bring us all good luck, let me say four magic words, the true “Open Sesame” of childhood: Once upon a time…
Key Places
Town in the Yvelines where Jean Cocteau was born in 1889 into a cultured, middle-class family.
Cocteau lived on the rue de Montpensier, beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, where he worked and entertained his artist friends.
Stage where the ballet Parade premiered in May 1917, with Satie, Picasso and the Ballets Russes.
Small fishermen's chapel that Cocteau decorated entirely with frescoes in 1957.
Villa on the Côte d'Azur whose walls and ceilings Cocteau “tattooed” with mythological drawings from 1950 onward.
Town in the Essonne where Cocteau died in 1963; there he decorated the Saint-Blaise-des-Simples chapel, where he is buried.
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Le Coq et l'Arlequin
1918
Les Enfants terribles
1929
Les Parents terribles
1938
