Jean Cocteau

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Description

From the magical Beauty and the Beast to the surreal Orpheus films, Jean Cocteau is renowned as a leading figure in European cinema as well as a creative force collaborating with artists as diverse as Picasso, Diaghilev and Edith Piaf. Yet Cocteau's work and life have rarely been examined together. Evaluating Cocteau's career and his fascinating personal life on equal terms, James S. Williams offers here a groundbreaking analysis that sets them both within highly revealing historical and artistic contexts.

Reviews

comprehensive and easily accessible . . . Williams painstakingly crafts a seminal study on the life and art of Jean Cocteau with a flair for language and a scholarly knowledge of his subject * Film Matters *
[a] highly absorbing account of Cocteaus colourful, yet troubled life leaves the reader eager to (re)visit the work of one of the most fascinating artists of the twentieth century. * French Studies *
This sturdy, compact and fast-moving survey of Cocteaus life and work runs from his precocious false start as a poet in the style of Anna de Noailles, through his reinvention as a radical modernist after inspirational meetings with Diaghilev and Picasso, and the fulfilment of his new life project in his subsequent long career as a poet working in verse, prose, theatre, art and film . . . neatly illustrated and requires no knowledge of French * Forum for Modern Language Studies *
another welcome addition to the still relatively limited critical literature on this important figure . . . this is an approachable and well-illustrated text, which will cause its readers to look at Cocteau in a new and more favourable light, and is an important contribution to the reassessment of the author that is currently under way. * Modern Language Review *
Well-written and well-paced . . . A good summation of Cocteaus significance as a gay artist. * The Gay and Lesbian Review *

Author Bio

James S. Williams is Professor of Modern French Literature and Film at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema (2013), Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics (2016), and Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty (2019), winner of the 2020 R. Gapper Prize.