Beauty and the Beast (1946, French)

Visually, Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast is stunning – the sequences in the Beast’s castle are incredible, as disembodied hands present candelabras, mute heads observe from the fireplace, and physical transformations occur at the threshold of every room. The costumes are beautiful, and the make-up that creates the Beast’s catlike face is impressive even by contemporary standards – he never looks like a puppet, or a man in a mask.

However (spoiler alert!), I can’t help but quibble with the ending – everything is wrapped up in such an oddly abrupt manner, with the hero and the villain essentially trading places in the blink of an eye. Belle’s reaction to the transformation is similarly odd, rendering her character shallow and calling into question her actions in the rest of the film. Of course, a fairy tale needs a magically happy ending, but this one is bewildering, almost as if Cocteau is sending up the genre itself.