« Peu à peu le style se métamorphosait » Définir l’adaptation par la transformation (du) poétique. Jean Cocteau et La Belle et la Bête

If reinvention is a leitmotiv of Cocteau’s work, La Belle et la Bête (1946) occupies a singular place ; it can be read as an Ars poetica, a film on the art of making a film. A metamorphosis of a text which tells of metamorphosis, La Belle et la Bête is a pattern for all adaptations. Cocteau sets the tale in an aesthetic practice which translates a poetics of permeability. His reading of the tale offers him the material for a film at the intersection of experimental and conventional cinema.