Jean Cocteau

Born: 1889-07-05

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ kɔkto]; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Along with other avant-garde artists of his generation (Jean Anouilh and René Char for example) Cocteau grappled with the algebra of verbal codes old and new, mise en scène language and technologies of modernism to create a paradox: a classical avant-garde.[citation needed] His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María Félix, Édith Piaf (whom he cast in one of his one-act plays entitled Le Bel Indifferent in 1940), and Raymond Radiguet. His work was played out in the theatrical world of the Grands Theatres, the Boulevards and beyond during the Parisian epoque he both lived through and helped define and create. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim. Description above from the Wikipedia article Jean Cocteau, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.


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Beauty and the Beast

as The Voice of Magic (uncredited)
Released: 1946-10-29

The story of a gentle-hearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl. She is drawn to...

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To Each His Own Cinema

as Self (segment "47 Ans Après") (archive footage)
Released: 2007-10-31

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema"...

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Orpheus

as Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Released: 1950-09-29

A poet in love with Death follows his unhappy wife into the underworld.

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Testament of Orpheus

as The Poet
Released: 1960-02-18

Outside time and reality, the experiences of a poet. The judgement of the young poet by...

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Les Enfants Terribles

as Narrator (voice)
Released: 1950-03-29

Elisabeth and her brother Paul live isolated from much of the world after Paul is injured in a...

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The Image Book

as (film archive footage)
Released: 2018-10-11

In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings,...

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The Blood of a Poet

as Bit Part (uncredited)
Released: 1932-01-20

Told in four episodes, an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension,...

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America as Seen by a Frenchman

as Narrator (Afterword)
Released: 1960-06-08

At the end of the 1950s, French documentarian François Reichenbach spent eighteen months...

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The Storm Within

as Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Released: 1948-12-01

Young Michel is in love with the attractive Madeleine, so he decides to tell his parents of his...

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The Phantom Baron

as Le baron Julius Carol - le baron fantôme
Released: 1943-06-16

Elfy, Countess of Saint-Hélié's daughter, was brought up with her foster sister Anne, in an old...

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Jean Cocteau: Lies and Truths

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 1997-02-22

This documentary consists mainly of archive interviews of Jean Cocteau, and it features...

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Callas Assoluta

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2007-12-20

This revealing documentary from director Philippe Kohly examines the storied life of renowned...

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The Century Is Fifty

as Self
Released: 1950-03-16

As the title of this French documentary indicates, Ce Siecle a 50 Ans examines the 20th Century...

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From Joan of Arc to Philippe Pétain

as Reciter (voice)
Released: 1944-05-04

Sitting at his desk, Guitry gives us a lecture on French history from Joan of Arc to the...

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Art of Style: Jean Cocteau

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2018-12-06

French artist Jean Cocteau's multifaceted work across poetry, plays, paintings and film made him...

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It Happened on the 36 Candles

as Self (uncredited)
Released: 1957-10-16

Rejecting the union of her daughter Brigitte with a modest worker, Madame Magnin invents an...

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8 X 8: A Chess-Sonata in 8 Movements

as uncredited
Released: 1957-03-15

8 x 8: A Chess-Sonata in 8 Movements is an American experimental film directed by Hans Richter,...

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La Malibran

as Alfred de Musset
Released: 1944-05-03

On the death of the famous singer Maria Malibran, Countess Merlin retraces the main lines of the...

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Venom and Eternity

as Self
Released: 1951-04-20

In this experimental film, Isidore Isou, the leader of the lettrist movement, lashes out at...

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Cocteau - Al Brown: the Poet and the Boxer

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2020-02-29

Portrait of Panama Al Brown, a great boxer in the 30's, and its story with France, with a focus...

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Disorder

as Self
Released: 1950-12-02

Variations on the cultural and intellectual explosion in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district in...

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A Night at the Opera

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2020-09-29

A documentary view of the galas of Paris’s Palais Garnier in the 1950s and ’60s.

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Jean Marais, le mal rouge et or

as self
Released: 2006-01-01

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La Villa Santo-Sospir

as Self
Released: 1952-12-05

Cocteau takes the viewer on a tour of a friend's villa on the French coast (a major location...

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Marcel Proust - Portrait Souvenir

as Self
Released: 1962-06-23

This documentary is a portrait of Proust composed of recollections by those who knew him....

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In This Atrocious Garden

as Narrator (voice)
Released: 1964-12-14

This short documentary film is conceived as a stroll through the valley of Thebes and the temple...

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Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 1984-11-15

Jean Cocteau reminisces about the people he has known throughout his long life.

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Daughter of the Sands

as Narrator (voice)
Released: 1949-01-11

This Moroccan romance is a kind of Arab Tristan and Isolde: the heroine kills herself when she...

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Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000

as Self
Released: 1962-06-12

In August 1963, just a couple of months before his death, Jean Cocteau made one last short film....

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Great Writers: Jean Cocteau

as Self
Released: 1996-07-05

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, and filmmaker, whose...

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Jean Cocteau Fait du Cinéma

as uncredited
Released: 1925-01-01

A short film about a famous writer (acted by Cocteau himself) who loses control of his hand and...

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Portrait Souvenir: Jean Cocteau

as Self
Released: 1964-02-11

Cocteau, at his home, remembers his childhood, talks at length about theater, cinema,...

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Iran Darroudi: The Painter of Ethereal Moments

as Self (archive footage)
Released: 2009-01-01

A look at the life and art of Ms. Iran Darroudi, one of the most important contemporary Iranian...

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Toute la vérité, rien que la vérité : Jean Cocteau

as Himself
Released: 1959-02-07

In 1959, Jean Cocteau looked back on his artistic journey for the Télé Monte-Carlo television...

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Discorama

as Self
First aired: 1959-02-04

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Cinépanorama

as Self
First aired: 1956-02-04

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