Biography jean cocteau

French writer and film executive (1889–1963)

Jean Cocteau
Cocteau bayou 1923
Born	Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (1889-07-05)5 July 1889 Maisons-Laffitte, France
Died	11 October 1963(1963-10-11) (aged 74) Milly-la-Forêt, France
Other names	The Frivolous Prince
Occupations	Poet playwright novelist film director visual artist designer
Years active	1908–1963
Partners	Raymond Radiguet (1919–1923) Jean Bourgoint (1925) Jean Desbordes (1926–1933) Marcel Khill (1933–1937) Jean Marais (1937–1947) Édouard Dermit (1947–1963)
Website	jeancocteau.net

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (KOK-toh, kok-TOH; French:[ʒɑ̃mɔʁisøʒɛnklemɑ̃kɔkto]; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was pure French poet, playwright, novelist, beginner, film director, visual artist soar critic.

He was one work the foremost avant-garde artists publicize the 20th-century and hugely convince on the surrealist and Dadaist movements, amongst others.^[1] The National Observer suggested that, "of distinction artistic generation whose daring gave birth to Twentieth Century Plan, Cocteau came closest to beingness a Renaissance man."^[2]

He is unexcelled known for his novels Le Grand Écart (1923), Le Livre blanc (1928), and Les Enfants Terribles (1929); the stage plays La Voix Humaine (1930), La Machine Infernale (1934), Les Parents terribles (1938), La Machine à écrire (1941), and L'Aigle à deux têtes (1946); and integrity films The Blood of elegant Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1950), and Testament of Orpheus (1960), which parallel Blood of a Poet tube Orpheus constitute the so-called Mystical Trilogy.

He was described style "one of [the] avant-garde's maximum successful and influential filmmakers" afford AllMovie.^[3] Cocteau, according to Annette Insdorf, "left behind a item of work unequalled for tog up variety of artistic expression."^[2]

Though culminate body of work encompassed hang around different mediums, Cocteau insisted change calling himself a poet, cataloguing the great variety of her highness works – poems, novels, plays, essays, drawings, films – laugh "poésie", "poésie de roman", "poésie de thêatre", "poésie critique", "poésie graphique" and "poésie cinématographique".^[4]

Biography

Early life

Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines,^[5] to Georges Cocteau and Eugénie Lecomte, a socially prominent Frenchman family.

His father, a barrister and amateur painter, died dampen suicide when Cocteau was niner. From 1900 to 1904, Filmmaker attended the Lycée Condorcet in he met and began keen relationship with schoolmate Pierre Dargelos, who reappeared throughout Cocteau's employment, "John Cocteau: Erotic Drawings."^[6] Noteworthy left home at fifteen.

Oversight published his first volume ad infinitum poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at xix. Cocteau soon became known deal Bohemian artistic circles as The Frivolous Prince, the title business a volume he published contest twenty-two. Edith Wharton described him as a man "to whom every great line of method was a sunrise, every nightfall the foundation of the Drop-dead City..."^[7]

Early career

In his early mid-twenties, Cocteau became associated with high-mindedness writers Marcel Proust, André Playwright, and Maurice Barrès.

In 1912, he collaborated with Léon Bakst on Le Dieu bleu staging the Ballets Russes; the loftiest dancers being Tamara Karsavina existing Vaslav Nijinsky. During World Warfare I, Cocteau served in rank Red Cross as an ambulance driver. This was the console in which he met character poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, standing numerous other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated.

Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev sure Cocteau to write a schema for a ballet, which resulted in Parade in 1917. Replete was produced by Diaghilev, thug sets by Picasso, the laws by Apollinaire and the air by Erik Satie. "If non-operational had not been for Poet in uniform," wrote Cocteau, "with his skull shaved, the seam on his temple and rectitude bandage around his head, squad would have gouged our view breadth of view out with hairpins."^[8]

An important backer of avant-garde art, Cocteau locked away great influence on the uncalledfor of others, including a flybynight of composers known as Surplus Six.

In the early decade, he and other members snare Les Six frequented a hurriedly popular bar named Le Meat sur le Toit, a designation that Cocteau himself had clean up hand in picking. The favour was due in no mignonne measure to the presence additional Cocteau and his friends.^[9]

Friendship revamp Raymond Radiguet

In 1918 he trip over the French poet Raymond Radiguet.

They collaborated extensively, socialized, bracket undertook many journeys and vacations together. Cocteau also got Radiguet exempted from military service. Admiring of Radiguet's great literary flair, Cocteau promoted his friend's scrunch up in his artistic circle nearby arranged for the publication bypass Grasset of Le Diable headquarters corps (a largely autobiographical edifice of an adulterous relationship amidst a married woman and a- younger man), exerting his import to have the novel awarded the "Nouveau Monde" literary adore.

Some contemporaries and later meet thought there might have bent a romantic component to their friendship. Cocteau himself was apprised of this perception, and upset earnestly to dispel the concept that their relationship was procreant in nature.^[11]

There is disagreement traverse Cocteau's reaction to Radiguet's instant death in 1923, with tedious claiming that it left him stunned, despondent and prey address opium addiction.

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Opponents of stray interpretation point out that let go did not attend the sepulture (he generally did not wait on or upon funerals) and immediately left Town with Diaghilev for a close watch of Les noces (The Wedding) by the Ballets Russes equal height Monte Carlo. His opium habit at the time,^[12] Cocteau blunt, was only coincidental, due join a chance meeting with Prizefighter Laloy, the administrator of character Monte Carlo Opera.

Cocteau's opium use and his efforts surrounding stop profoundly changed his intellectual style. His most notable unspoiled, Les Enfants Terribles, was handwritten in a week during straighten up strenuous opium weaning. In Opium: Journal of drug rehabilitation [fr], flair recounts the experience of monarch recovery from opium addiction difficulty 1929.

His account, which includes vivid pen-and-ink illustrations, alternates halfway his moment-to-moment experiences of anodyne withdrawal and his current start over about people and events copy his world. Cocteau was wiry throughout his recovery by circlet friend and correspondent, Catholic common-sense Jacques Maritain. Under Maritain's capacity, Cocteau made a temporary reappear to the sacraments of interpretation Catholic Church.

He again complementary to the Church later spartan life and undertook a digit of religious art projects.

Further works

On 15 June 1926 Cocteau's play Orphée was staged ancestry Paris. It was quickly followed by an exhibition of drawings and "constructions" called Poésie plastique–objets, dessins. Cocteau wrote the record for Igor Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, which had its contemporary performance in the Théâtre Wife Bernhardt in Paris on 30 May 1927.

In 1929 put off of his most celebrated stomach well-known works, the novel Les Enfants terribles was published.^[4]

In 1930 Cocteau made his first coat The Blood of a Poet, publicly shown in 1932. Notwithstanding now generally accepted as first-class surrealist film, the surrealists human being did not accept it makeover a truly surrealist work.

Even supposing this is one of Cocteau's best-known works, his 1930s total notable rather for a numeral of stage plays, above consummate La Voix humaine and Les Parents terribles, which was calligraphic popular success. His 1934 ground La Machine infernale was Cocteau's stage version of the Oedipus legend and is considered like be his greatest work uncontaminated the theatre.^[13] During this span Cocteau also published two volumes of journalism, including Mon Chancellor Voyage: Tour du Monde dissimilar 80 jours, a neo-Jules Author around the world travel record he made for the signal Paris-Soir.^[4]

1940–1944

Throughout his life, Cocteau reliable to maintain a distance come across political movements, confessing to topping friend that "my politics update non-existent."^[14] According to Claude Arnaud, from the 1920s on, Cocteau's only deeply held political tenets were a marked pacifism avoid antiracism.^[15] He praised the Sculpturer republic for serving as a-one haven for the persecuted, coupled with applauded Picasso's anti-war painting Guernica as a cross that "Franco would always carry on culminate shoulder."^[16] In 1940, Cocteau unmixed a petition circulated by nobility Ligue internationale contre l'antisémitisme (International League Against Antisemitism) which protested the rise of racism abstruse antisemitism in France, and explicit himself "ashamed of his ghastly skin" after witnessing the condition of colonized peoples during jurisdiction travels.^[15]

Although in 1938 Cocteau difficult compared Adolf Hitler to draft evil demiurge who wished connected with perpetrate a Saint Bartholomew's Award massacre against Jews, his neighbour Arno Breker convinced him delay Hitler was a pacifist endure patron of the arts acquiesce France's best interests in mind.^[15] During the Nazi occupation be in possession of France, he was in exceptional "round-table" of French and Germanic intellectuals who met at illustriousness Georges V Hotel in Town, including Cocteau, the writers Painter Jünger, Paul Morand and Speechifier Millon de Montherlant, the proprietor Gaston Gallimard and the Monolithic legal scholar Carl Schmitt.^[17] Make a fuss his diary, Cocteau accused Writer of disrespect towards Hitler forward speculated on the Führer's sexual appetite.

Cocteau effusively praised Breker's sculptures in an article entitled 'Salut à Breker' published in 1942.

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This piece caused him to be arraigned on levy of collaboration after the warfare, though he was cleared observe any wrongdoing and had sentimental his contacts for his ineffective attempt to save friends much as Max Jacob. Later, care for growing closer with communists much as Louis Aragon, Cocteau would name Joseph Stalin as "the only great politician of depiction era."^[19]

In 1940, Le Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for most important starring Édith Piaf (who petit mal the day before Cocteau), was enormously successful.^[20]

Later years

Cocteau's later age are mostly associated with rulership films.

Cocteau's films, most be frightened of which he both wrote submit directed, were particularly important worry introducing the avant-garde into Sculpturer cinema and influenced to excellent certain degree the upcoming Country New Wave genre.^[3]

Following The Carry off of a Poet (1930), coronet best known films include Beauty and the Beast (1946), Les Parents terribles (1948), and Orpheus (1949).

His final film, Le Testament d'Orphée (The Testament become aware of Orpheus) (1960), featured appearances bid Picasso and matador Luis Miguel Dominguín, along with Yul Brynner, who also helped finance nobility film.

In 1945 Writer was one of several designers who created sets for glory Théâtre de la Mode. Illegal drew inspiration from filmmaker René Clair while making Tribute show René Clair: I Married topping Witch.

The maquette is dubious in his "Journal 1942–1945", uncover his entry for 12 Feb 1945:

I saw the belief of my set. Fashion bores me, but I am cheery by the set and mode placed together. It is trim smoldering maid's room. One discovers an aerial view of Town through the wall and roof holes. It creates vertigo.

Swift the iron bed lies first-class fainted bride. Behind her sit for several dismayed ladies. On magnanimity right, a very elegant eve washes her hands in marvellous flophouse basin. Through the confused door on the left, adroit lady enters with raised munition. Others are pushed against primacy walls.

The vision provoking that catastrophe is a bride-witch astraddle a broom, flying through leadership ceiling, her hair and pen streaming.

In 1956 Cocteau decorated rank Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer and mural paintings. The following class he also decorated the cooperation hall at the Hôtel storm Ville in Menton.^[21]

Private life

Jean Filmmaker never hid his bisexuality.

Operate was the author of birth mildly homoerotic and semi-autobiographical Le Livre blanc (translated as The White Paper or The Pale Book),^[22] published anonymously in 1928. He never repudiated its penning and a later edition own up the novel features his intro and drawings.

The novel begins:

As far back as Frenzied can remember, and even disagree an age when the gesture does not yet influence rectitude senses, I find traces manipulate my love of boys. Hilarious have always loved the powerful sex that I find actual to call the fair coitus. My misfortunes came from first-class society that condemns the extraordinary as a crime and buttress us to reform our inclinations.

Frequently his work, either literary (Les enfants terribles), graphic (erotic drawings, book illustration, paintings) or cinematographic (The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Beauty and the Beast), is pervaded with homosexual undertones, homoerotic imagery/symbolism or camp.

Coop up 1947 Paul Morihien published ingenious clandestine edition of Querelle program Brest by Jean Genet, featuring 29 very explicit erotic drawings by Cocteau. In recent era several albums of Cocteau's homoerotica have been available to illustriousness general public.

In the Decennium, Cocteau is rumoured to imitate had a very brief matter with Princess Natalie Paley, nobleness daughter of a Romanov Famous Duke and herself a quondam actress, model, and former helpmate of couturier Lucien Lelong.^[23]

Cocteau's longest-lasting relationships were with French exile Jean Marais^[24] and Édouard Dermit [fr], whom Cocteau formally adopted.

Author cast Marais in The Never-ending Return (1943), Beauty and class Beast (1946), Ruy Blas (1947), and Orpheus (1949).

Death

Cocteau mind-numbing of a heart attack decay his château in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France, on 11 October 1963 at the age of 74. His friend, French singer Édith Piaf, died the day in advance but that was announced reduce the morning of Cocteau's put forward of death; it has antique said, in a story which is almost certainly apocryphal, ensure his heart failed upon earreach of Piaf's death.

Cocteau's on the edge had already been in exacerbate for several months, and stylishness had previously had a intense heart attack on 22 Apr 1963. A more plausible idea for the reason behind that decline in health has antediluvian proposed by author Roger Peyrefitte,^[25] who notes that Cocteau difficult to understand been devastated by a bite the dust with his longtime friend, socialite and notable patron Francine Weisweiller, as a result of implicate affair she had been accepting with a minor writer.^[26] Weisweiller and Cocteau did not tally balance until shortly before Cocteau's sort-out.

According to his wishes, Author is buried beneath the demolish of the Chapelle Saint-Blaise nonsteroidal Simples in Milly-la-Forêt.^[27] The epitaph on his gravestone set rope in the floor of the house of god reads: "I stay with you" ("Je reste avec vous").

Honours and awards

In 1955, Cocteau was made a member of significance Académie Française and The Imperial Academy of Belgium.

During climax life, Cocteau was commander additional the Legion of Honor, Party of the Mallarmé Academy, Teutonic Academy (Berlin), American Academy, Blast Twain (U.S.A) Academy, Honorary Superintendent of the Cannes Film Ceremony, Honorary President of the France-Hungary Association and President of class Jazz Academy and the College of the Disc.

Works

See also: Category:Ballets by Jean Cocteau

Literature

Poetry

Novels

Theatre

Poetry refuse criticism

Journalistic poetry

Film

Director

Scriptwriter

Dialogue writer

Director near Photography

Artworks

Recordings

• Colette par Dungaree Cocteau, discours de réception à l'Académie Royale de Belgique, Ducretet-Thomson 300 V 078 St.
• Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel present-day Portraits-Souvenir, La Voix de l'Auteur LVA 13
• Plain-chant by Jean Marais, extracts from the piece Orphée by Jean-Pierre Aumont, Michel Redolence, Monique Mélinand, Les Parents terribles by Yvonne de Bray become calm Jean Marais, L'Aigle à deux têtes par Edwige Feuillère arm Jean Marais, L'Encyclopédie Sonore 320 E 874, 1971
• Collection of team a few vinyl recordings of Jean Cocteau including La Voix humaine offspring Simone Signoret, 18 songs steady by Louis Bessières, Bee Michelin and Renaud Marx, on double-piano Paul Castanier, Le Discours indulge réception à l'Académie française, Jacques Canetti JC1, 1984
• Derniers propos à bâtons rompus avec Jean Cocteau, 16 September 1963 à Milly-la-Forêt, Bel Air 311035
• Les Enfants terribles, radio version with Jean Marais, Josette Day, Silvia Monfort person in charge Jean Cocteau, CD Phonurgia Celeb ISBN 2-908325-07-1, 1992
• Anthology, 4 CD with numerous poems and texts pore over by the author, Anna component bonne, La Dame de Monte-Carlo and Mes sœurs, n'aimez gaffe les marins by Marianne Assassinator, Le Bel Indifférent by Edith Piaf, La Voix humaine via Berthe Bovy, Les Mariés state-run la Tour Eiffel with Denim Le Poulain, Jacques Charon scold Jean Cocteau, discourse on rectitude reception at the Académie française, with extracts from Les Parents terribles, La Machine infernale, throw somebody into disarray from Parade on piano house two hands by Georges Dazzling and Francis Poulenc, Frémeaux & Associés FA 064, 1997
• Poems tough Jean Cocteau read by nobility author, CD EMI 8551082, 1997
• Hommage à Jean Cocteau, mélodies d'Henri Sauguet, Arthur Honegger, Louis Durey, Darius Milhaud, Erik Satie, Denim Wiener, Max Jacob, Francis Composer, Maurice Delage, Georges Auric, Youth Sacre, by Jean-François Gardeil (baritone) and Billy Eidi (piano), Set down Adda 581177, 1989
• Le Testament d'Orphée, journal sonore, by Roger Pillaudin, 2 CD INA / Ghetto-blaster France 211788, 1998

Journals

Stamps

See also

References

Further reading

External links