Les enfants terribles

As I sit and watch "Les Enfants Terribles", I wonder why it took me so long to see this film. After all, I've reviewed a couple hundred French films AND Jean-Pierre Melville is perhaps my favorite French director and I completely adored several of Jean Cocteau's films. So why did I wait so long---and is it worth the wait? Jean Cocteau wrote this story and narrates. And, according to IMDb, he even directed a tiny bit of the film--though whether these portions were actually used in the film isn't clear.

The Story begins with teenager Paul being injured in a snowball fight. Instead of just getting up and walking it off, it seems that the blow to his chest revealed some underlying congenital defect--and Paul is sent home for bed rest. In fact, the doctor tells his sister, Elisabeth, that he's to stay home--he'll be bedridden because any sort of exertion can kill him. So, Elisabeth takes care of him--and the longer they are together, the closer they become. Yet, weirdly, there also is a very strong love-hate relationship between them--as they bicker nonstop and seem as if they hate each other--yet NEED each other. There's a TONS more to the film than this--including some undercurrents of bisexuality, a weird relationship with another girl and LOTS of incestuous and Freudian stuff as well! But, I don't want to ruin it by revealing too much...but it's weird.

So is this a film that you'll like, probably not. It's not especially enjoyable--nor is it really meant to be. Instead, it's a bizarre experimental film--one of the very first New Wave films that explores incest and bisexuality and icky Freudian stuff! As I said, not what the average viewer will enjoy. But, the plot IS original and the camera-work exceptional. And it is worth seeing...once. An unusual experiment to say the least! And NOT a film to watch if you are depressed or want to see some happy ending!

I recently saw this movie, titled The Strange Ones in English, with English subtitles on TCM. I know a little French, and it seemed the English translations may not have captured all the nuances, but I'm not sure.

Before writing my review I wanted to see what more experienced or better informed people were saying, and I gather that most of the favorable reviewers liked the daring themes presented in stark black and white format with highly dramatic acting and artistic camera work. No doubt about it, this movie features all of those, and I did watch the whole thing because of those elements.

As with many French films I've seen over the years, this film presents an amoral view of life, i.e., there is no right or wrong, in fact in this movie there is no real consideration of right or wrong in the script or the story at all.

Minutes before my sister learned that her fiancée had been killed in a car accident, she asked me "what is existentialism?" I had a sense for the concept but I struggled to make it concrete. That awful phone call ended the conversation about literature, but I never forgot that moment. Now I know the answer, and The Strange Ones could well serve as a teaching tool in literature or philosophy classes; a person actively watching and thinking about this movie will "get" what existentialism is (in cinema anyway).

This film brilliantly presents strange people, maybe "weird people" better says it, going through unusual events in an unusual context. In existentialism nothing really has overarching meaning, so whatever happens, happens, and the results yield not so much tragedy as very dark farce.

Jean Cocteau, considered one of the foremost French artists of the 20th century, wrote and narrated this bizarrely familial tale about a brother and sister who have a strong love/hate relationship that expresses itself in high-strung shouting bouts that result in one of them storming out of the room. Clearly, this is a volatile relationship that is only made worse when the elder sister, Elisabeth, marries a young, rich mogul named Mike who unexpectedly leaves his entire fortune to her. Adding to this drama is the brother, Paul, being injured in a snowball fight and forced to rest extensively in Elisabeth's mansion.

As a young girl and man that are acquaintances of the siblings enter the equation, the drama heats up which leads to serious revelations and underlying feelings coming to the surface. Such a story in the early 1950s had to be seen, even in Europe, as somewhat controversial given the incestuous undertones of Elisabeth and Paul's relationship. Even so, to see classic Cocteau as directed by a young, up-and-coming Jean-Pierre Melville still feeling out his soon to be unique and inspired style.

Though at times a bit French-flavored melodrama and bizarre psycho- sexual encounters, Les Enfants Terribles still has enough power and creative camera work to engage the viewer up until the blunt conclusion.

"LES PARENTS TERRIBLES" directed by Cocteau himself : an over possessive mother and her selfish husband destroy their son's life.

"LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES" directed by Jean -Pierre Melville: a sister and a brother tear each other in pieces .The sister is Nicole Stephane whose performance is quite impressive ,and she rises to the occasion when it comes to portray such a terrifying character (Cocteau lines are mysterious and threatening,"she didn't marry him for love , neither she did for his money but she did it for his death")When we make acquaintance with them,they live under a "carapace" and their mother -soon to die- is no more alive than Mrs Bates in "psycho" .Around them,a young man and a young girl who will be no more than puppets in their hands (mainly Elisabeth's (Stephane))Halfway between cinema and theater -but as when Cocteau himself directed- we never feel we are watching a filmed stage production.The dialogue is weird,now childlike ,now intriguing,often bewildering ,always brilliant with terrific lines like the one I quote above.The voice over ,which is often superfluous in other works -is here thoroughly relevant -and besides it's Cocteau's voice!-

Children who refuse to grow up?A fraid of the world outside?Youngsters fascinated by death? Incestuous relationship?

Strange how ,with the staggering exception of "la belle et la bête " ,Cocteau's movies display a gloomy cold atmosphere and a doomed fate :his "l'aigle à deux têtes" and "les parents terribles" as well as Delannoy's "l'éternel retour" and "la princesse de CLèves" or Pierre Billon's "Ruy Blas".

As for Melville,I always preferred his non-gangsters movies (this one,"le silence de la mer" "Léon Morin prêtre" ,"l'armée des ombres" ) to his thrillers (the likes of "le samouraï " or "le cercle rouge" ) which are no more than rehash of American film noirs with absurd metaphysical pretensions at that.

I saw this twice in a single day. And couldn't stop watching this after. Each time I start watching a Hollywood movie I can't help but surrender back to this surrealist nutjob where nothing is really definable.

Much of the literature I've read on this focus on the unlikely collaboration between Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville, with most putting it in context of Cocteau's other films. But I've always thought that Cocteau's Orphée, made during the same period, feels static and leaden amidst the classical style of its 50's direction. Les Enfants Terribles, while retaining a very classical premise, is completely revolutionary, resembling the unruly romanticism of Rimbaud's poetry. Nothing in the film stays the same - everything is constantly shifting; dyamics are constantly changing; even the sets change in subtle ways. Everything is made purposefully ambiguous and ambivalent such that paradoxes and contradictions abound in a single emotion. But ultimately, as all great Melvillian films are, the film is about the futility of humanity in the face of life and death.

I could go on and on about this movie; Melville is truly one of the great poets of cinema.