Kind of blue - La Bête /The Beast (1975)

“La Bête”/“The Beast” is a remarkable film. It flirts with pornography but is far too lyrical and couched in too many ideas to be that alone. This is not to say that it isn’t erotic or accompanied by elements that could be called “pornographic”. 

As much as some will aver that the film really doesn’t have anything to do with the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, I am certainly of the mind that it does. I would even go so far to say that I enjoyed it as much and found it almost as poetic as Cocteau’s interpretation. Maybe not as heartrendingly moving or beautiful, but it has its own poetic logic that both undergirds and subverts its more prurient elements.

Walerian Borowczyk’s opus turns the fairytale on its head. The Beast is not a handsome prince locked by a spell in a vicious animal exterior, nor is the belle of this tale a prisoner in the Beast’s castle, though she is his savior, of sorts. No, in this case, our beast is Mathurin, the unrefined son of a marquis whose family fortunes are on the wane and whose long dynasty in the region are near ruin. Our belle, Lucy Broadhurst, is Mathurin’s betrothed, the wealthy niece of Virginia’s, whose brother-in-law, the late Philip Broadhurst has appointed executors of his will.  Both are either well-to-do gentry from England or perhaps even, the U.S. As played by Lisbeth Hummel and Elizabeth Kaza respectively, it is difficult to get a handle on their origins, but given that there chauffeur is a Black American driver, one might go with the American. If we choose the latter, it does add an additional political layer that is telling in some dialog between the chauffeur and Ifany, the Black manservant of the château (who is also the lover of Marquis Pierre’s daughter Clarisse). It was Philip’s wish that Lucy wed Mathurin.

From that little description, you can probably guess that this is not your run of the mill sexy farce. 

The main conflict driving the action is that the union is to be blessed by Cardinal Joseph, Duc Rammendelo’s brother. Le Duc does not approve of the marriage because he fears that it will result in Mathurin’s death and Mathurin is very much the apple of the Duke’s eyes. Nevertheless, Pierre impresses upon Rammendelo that this merger must go through to save the family estate and preserve the manner according to which they are accustomed. Also, Pierre has proof that the Duke poisoned his own (Rammendelo’s) wife after two months of marriage. The Duke is a huge misogynist and holder of family lore, including the tale that the Lady Romilda of 200 years before was accosted, raped, and impregnated by a beast who died after being so drained. It is clear that Rammendelo believes Mathurin to be a descendent of that coital union and if the pattern holds, will die once the marriage is consummated.

Mathurin is not a bad sort, by the way. A bit rough and fond of his horses, we are first introduced to him watching a stud mount a mare in graphic detail. Indeed, the film begins with the sound of horses neighing in rutting mode over the beginning credits. The act itself is filmed in close shots to ensure we see everything against a background of equine roars. It may sound rough, but a) it’s so intended and b) the cinematography and sound design are, frankly, perfect for what Borowczyk is trying to do.

Also, this mise-en-scène establishes Mathurin’s rather rough-hewn character. He balks when his Pierre tells him Lucy has arrived; he feels himself ugly and clumsy and he’s forgotten all the advice his father gave him. Pierre had established this relationship through a series of letters. While Virginia might have reservations about the whole thing, Lucy is enthusiastically down for it, as we discover when they are introduced en route to the chateau.

Lucy is as seventies a “free spirit” as any in the decade’s European films. Hummel brings a fierce intelligence and Alice in Wonderland kind of fascination with all that she encounters in the film. She is also as randy as Clarisse and Ifany; and yes, watching the horses copulate was a bit of a turn-on for her, too.

An additional, smaller wrinkle in the proceedings is that Mathurin has to be baptized. To this end, the village priest and two of his altar boys come out to the Château to perform the rite and yep, that’s one horny priest. The kisses he plants on his charges are not light pecks on the cheek; Borowczyck has the Church in his sites, too. 

The women arrive at the time when Mathurin is getting both shaved by Pierre and baptized. When the Marquis explains that he is bathing his son, Aunt Virginia is more than a little repulsed but Lucy thinks it’s sweet. Of course, since no explanation is given, how would they know? Lucy, by the way, is said to be very pious, so obviously it wouldn’t do to tell her that her fiancé isn’t baptized.

During all this, Rammendelo has been tasked with getting his brother to get in from Rome and bless this marriage. And quick. Unfortunately, the Cardinal’s secretary hangs up on him repeatedly when he says his name and this leaves one to assume that the good Count is not a staunch Catholic in the eyes of either his brother or the secretary. 

There is also a recurring coitus interruptus between Clarisse and Ifany. Each time Ifany is called for, the two of them are just getting busy or deep in the throes. Ifany is impressive, in case you’re wondering, and Hassane Fall plays him with exasperated resignation. Later in the film, Clarisse takes off to retrieve a couple of children for the wedding (bridesmaids?), who are stuck in a closet during one of Ifany and her trysts and who later are sound asleep on the bed while the adults go at it in the closet. 

Upon getting settled in and waiting for the Cardinal to appear, (everyone is assured by Pierre that he will show up at any moment) Lucy discovers a drawing on the back of some calligraphy right out of Hans Bellmer of a panther type animal having its way with a woman and Rammendelo shows her Romilda’s diary with a page of drawings of the beast that took her those centuries ago. This certainly fires up Lucy’s imagination.

I need to mention here that the performances are committed. Guy Téjan as the Count/Marquis Pierre de l’Esperance is a man barely hiding his desperation but without the tics that would give it away far too much and turn into overt satire. Marcel Dalio, many English movie goers would recognize from working with Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder in “To Have and Have Not” and “Sabrina” also worked early on with Jean Renoir and his list of credits is too extensive to go into at any length; his Duc Rammendelo is a study in flustered, frustrated fear. As for our Mathurin, Pierre Benedetti is a combination of shy and vulnerable and barely contained bull in the china shop clumsiness. But he isn’t making Mathurin an object of either ridicule or pity; Pierre’s son would genuinely rather tend the horses and be left alone.

At some point, the women are impressed on to rest for a bit and we follow Lucy into her room where she discovers a couple of books in a desk including a copy of Voltaire’s “The Maid of Orleans” with an engraving of a horse with wings sexually assaulting a man as a woman covers her eyes(1). In the meantime, Ifany has been called on to bring up the ladies’ luggage and interrupt another intimate moment. Clarisse finishes herself off with rubbing one out using the footboard of the bed, in case you want to know. Pascals Rivault does a fine job, is all I’m going to say.

It’s here that Ifany goes down to the car to get the luggage and an interesting back and forth ensues between him and the Chauffeur (who goes uncredited, from what I can see). The driver mentions in passing that Ifany is working as a slave for the masters of the chateau and Ifany demurs. In any case, the Chauffeur says, you’ll soon be rich once this wedding takes place. It’s an intriguing dialog between the two Black characters, each perhaps marginalized in their respective societies, but each doing well in their own way. I can’t say for sure, but the Chauffeur’s comments may be as much comments regarding wealth in the U.S. and/or how Americans perceive wealth and status in other countries (perhaps, particularly France at this point). 

Lucy has started fantasizing and falling into a revery about Romilda - played by Sirpa Lane as erotically as anything else she’s been in - playing a Scarlatti etude and catching a lamb escaping into the forest. We hear the roar of a lion over another sumptuous composition and Romilda ceases her playing to go in search of the lamb. She finds the animal torn apart and we are introduced to the Beast who is plainly excited. And I do mean excited as in engorged. One might assume that the phallus derives from Lucy’s having seen the horses rutting (and taking Polaroids, to boot); hence, the member. Romilda flees and loses various pieces of clothing, 

 

She is awakens from her adventure and finds Mathurin in an adjacent room sleeping off his drunk. She is solicitous of him and removes his shoes and returns to her room, washes up and resumes the dream. She begins by masturbating with a rose from Mathurin (well, Pierre for Mathurin) and before long we find Romilda hanging onto a tree branch as the Beast licks her and her feet massage his member. The logistics may not be comfortable but they are intriguing. Eventually, Romilda falls and begins running bare assed through the woods until the Beast is on her and she takes him with increasing pleasure. To be clear, there is no clumsy porno insertion of the member shot; we actually get a point of view of the forest floor and the glade pulsating in time with the Beast’s thrusts. Then a close up of Romilda, eyes half shut and tongue moistening her lips. 

Lucy awakens rolling about in her soaked and torn nightgown and returns to check on Mathurin again who is now in the throes of a nightmare, perhaps. She lays her fur coat over him and returns to Romilda finishing off the Beast and, well, bathing in ejaculate. The Beast falls to the ground, exhausted and after laying beside him, Romilda finds he has expired. She covers him in leaves and the camera flies over her discarded bodice and a shoe upon which a snail had been traveling as she and the Beast were going at it earlier. As crazy as it sounds - and I know that much of this just sounds crazy - the editing was impressive. Throughout, as much as some of the scenes in and of themselves are dreamlike, it is the pacing that ensures the feeling of a surreality.

Before we get to the denouement, the loose thread of Duc Rammendelo calling his brother is wrapped up when he finally gets hold of the Cardinal and begs him not to bless this union. Pierre overhears him, and approaches the camera with a straight-edge razor in hand (the same he used to shave Mathurin). Needless to say, our wheelchair-bound Duke is dispatched and Pierre carries on as though nothing much has happened. He returns to the Priest, the ladies, and that, as they say, is that.

After Romilda/Lucy are done, Lucy rises to check on Mathurin again. This time, she is completely nude and finds Mathurin dead. She explodes in a frenzy of fear and calls for her aunt, bangs on a couple of doors (takes Virginia long enough to come around) before the older woman shows up. By this time, Pierre arrives and eventually, Mathurin’s body is brought downstairs and his body viewed in full; he is hirsute and growing from the base of his spine, possessed of a tail. His right forearm and hand, freed from the cast they were in, reveal a hairy limb ending in a claw/paw. With all the reason in the world, Lucy and Virginia do the right thing: freak out and leave. Just as the Cardinal is arriving with his assistant. 

The Cardinal eyes Mathurin’s body dispassionately and delivers a mini-lecture about the sin of bestiality and its warping of character. He adds that because it is an easy sin to hide, women are to be specifically asked if they have lain with beasts by their confessors. Throughout the film, Boroczyk has been fairly plain about the manipulation of women by men, religious or not. Misogyny is not restricted only to the Duke; and for as overtly sexy/sexual as the film is, the idea that sex infuses many, if not all of our actions despite how we try to stem its flow or interrupt it, it will keep coming up. So to speak.

The rot of the aristocracy and the survival by marriage is not as subtle, and both the Duke and the Count are somewhat out of their element. The times have changed and on not too much reflection, we see that not only has the fairytale been turned on its head, but so, too, have the gender roles; here it is a man who is trying to marry off his son to maintain his social standing in the world (and one assumes, is marrying into riches). 

“La Bête” gets tossed in with a number of other “weird” or cult movies. This does the film a bit of a disservice; it has more on its mind than strangeness for strangeness’ sake. In many ways, it is a piece with much of Buñuel’s work in terms of sly social critique and sexual politics. The fact that it doesn’t shy away from more graphic displays of sex has ensured its reputation as edgy or to use that tired word, “pornographic”. If anything, it is erotic, but I didn’t necessarily find it titillating. Which isn’t to take away from the lush sensuality of the cinematography. 

Marcel Grignon and Bernard Daillencourt had both worked with Roger Vadim, but Grignon’s body of work is far more extensive and rich. I am assuming that Grignon was the lead director of photography on this. 

Works by Scarlatti provide the music and it’s an interesting choice. One of the Priest’s altar boys plays a sonata on the harpsichord (“he can’t keep his hands off one”, I recall the Priest telling Pierre…and I’ll just leave that there), loudly and percussively (the sound design in this film is so wonderfully intentional when it comes to emphasis and disorientation) and we hear the composer again, not just as Romilda is playing, but as background to the whole Beast scene. 

The film was and perhaps, still is banned in several countries. I first saw it at the Harvard Film Archive in the late 90s, early 00s and was impressed then at how timeless it looks. Its themes still resonate and it is disappointing that it doesn’t seem to be able to get more recognition on the strength of its merits as a film on its own. 

I also recognize something else that I haven’t conveyed in this reading. This film is hilarious. It may be serious in terms of its themes, but the various call-backs of Clarisse and Ifany, and especially, the scenes between the Priest and the boys are - while not necessarily played for laughs - pretty damn funny. The Beast-Romilda sequences are played for slapstick (although the eroticism of some of those scenes is intentional and well-staged). Even the scenes where Lucy is trying so desperately to get Aunt Virginia’s attention after discovering Mathurin’s body are amusing. I really do recommend approaching this with a satirical mindset.

Note:

1. The book itself is, I’m sure, not a random prop. Lucy actually finds two: before the Voltaire, she found “Sermons Chosen from the Mysteries of the True Religion”. The film began with an epigram of Voltaire’s: “Les rêves inquiets sont reélllement une  folie passagêre.”/“Troubled dreams are in fact a passing moment of madness.” Voltaire’s attitude toward the Catholic Church is well-known and the Maid of Orleans is, of course, Jeanne d’Arc, a singular figure of both martyrdom and sexuality, whose deeds and very existence threatened the prelates sense of order and whose extinction didn’t succeed in quashing her tale. It is not too much of a stretch (in fact, it’s pretty bloody obvious) to say that sexuality/sex is a form of madness, of dream.