LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES Movie Review

The Strange Ones

“I like it in the middle of the night when I am writing,” director Jean-Pierre Melville said in an interview 30 years ago, “working completely alone in my room at three in the morning. This I enjoy.” Melville's version of Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles, which he co-authored for the screen with Cocteau, feels like it was also filmed at three in the morning, in a deep and hallucinatory dream state. This is the story of Elisabeth and Paul, a brother and sister whose fascination for each other leads them to shut themselves off from the rest of the world, creating a private, self-imposed prison where society's taboos are irrelevant. It's crude and perhaps misleading to use the word “incest” in the poetic context of Les Enfants Terribles, yet such a word evokes more than a sexual encounter between siblings; there is also the emotional and romantic fact of the deep-seated, obsessive, pathological narcissism at its core, and this is what Cocteau and Melville have tapped. They couldn't have done it without the astounding and ethereal performance of Nicole Stéphane as Elisabeth—what she does with the role is deservedly legendary. Édouard Dermithe is Paul, and Cocteau's own voice hovers over these elegant proceedings as the narrator. The cinematography is by Henri Decaë, and the costumes are by Christian Dior. Suppressed in America for decades after its initial appearance, Les Enfants Terribles (also known as The Strange Ones) was re-released here in a restored version in 1975.

NEXT STOP … Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Heavenly Creatures

1950 105m/B FR Edouard Dermithe, Nicole Stephane; D: Jean-Pierre Melville; W: Jean Cocteau, Jean-Pierre Melville. VHS FCT, WBF