Les enfants terribles

"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.

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.

First, I have to admit that I nearly didn't write this comment at all. I read a rave review of Les Enfants Terribles by an earlier user and agreed with (almost) every word of it. What more was there to add? Then I searched my soul for a day or so, and had to admit that this film REALLY does not work for me - brilliantly directed, skilfully acted, moodily photographed and lyrically scored though it may be.

For all its many splendours, this Melville film of a Cocteau novel suffers from a malady I can only describe as "creative schizophrenia." It is recognisably a work by two highly individual artists, each of whom creates his own distinctive and magical world. No film by Melville could ever be mistaken for anybody else's. The same is true of Cocteau.

How do these two worlds mix together? To put it bluntly, not at all. This is most apparent in the (mis)casting of the androgynous and incestuous brother-sister duo. With his porcelain cheekbones and languid sensuality, Edouard Dhermitte is a classic Cocteau actor. (He was, in fact, Cocteau's lover at the time.) With her politicised Left Bank angst and 'butch' vitality, Nicole Stephane is a classic Melville heroine. (She had starred in his much finer 1947 film Le Silence de la Mer.) These two actors scarcely seem to belong on the same planet, let alone in the same family.

Still more disheartening is the utter lack of allure of Renee Cosima, a pudgy young ingenue who is cast as the brother's two ambisexual love objects - the sadistic schoolboy Dargelos and the lovelorn model Agathe. Lacking even the tiniest flicker of charisma, whether as a man or as a woman, Cosima makes it difficult for us to empathise with the hero's erotic longings, or to care much about the hothouse melodrama that breaks loose as a result.

Try as I might to warm to this film, I cannot help imagining it with a different cast. As the brother and sister, Helmut Berger and Dominique Sanda from The Garden of the Finzi Continis. As the androgynous sexual pirate Agathe/Dargelos, maybe Katharine Hepburn from Sylvia Scarlett or Indrid Thulin from The Magician or (why not?) the immortal Anne Carlisle from Liquid Sky. Most important of all - and I know this smacks of heresy - I would much rather Cocteau had directed it himself. One great auteur should be enough for any film.

David Melville

Before he made the Bob Le Flambeur, the "Grandfather of the New Wave" made this film in collaboration with Cocteau. The cinematography in this film is pretty good, and Melville does a good job at replicating the feel of a Cocteau film. This is perhaps Melville's most "Un-Melville" film. There's no hardened men or bank robbers to be had here. The portrait of a sister/brother relationship is well-done and believable, and easily holds your attention the entire film.

The imagery is great, particularly towards the ending and the shot of the dead mother. It's almost dream-like! With this film, and Bob, it's easy to see why Melville was such and inspiration to future New Wave directors such as Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, etc. Highly recommended, especially to Cocteau/Melville fans!