Love is a Battlefield in Cocteau’s Portrait of Familial Dysfunction Les Parents Terribles (1948) | Blu-ray Review

If Frank Capra had been around to tackle a Harold Robbins’ novel, it might have a vibe such as Jean Cocteau’s forgotten 1948 masterpiece, the rendering of hist stage play Les Parents Terribles (aka known as its English language title The Storm Within). With only six films to his directorial resume (eight if you count the co-directed 1957 experimental film 8×8: A Chess Sonata in Eight Movements and 1950’s unreleased Coriolan), Cocteau’s influence on the enduring legacy of French cinema is all the more impressive—though to be fair, his written word has been incorporated and re-hashed by a significant number of peers and later generations of filmmakers. For instance, one cannot behold this latest recuperation without remembering Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1950 adaptation of Cocteau’s novel with the similarly titled Les Enfants Terribles.

In the increasingly dilapidated but cozy home of Georges (Marcel Andre) and Yvonne (Yvonne de Bray), the long-married couple are held together by her sister Leonie (Gabrielle Dorziat), who tends to her sister’s diabetic needs and was also once a lover of Georges’. Yvonne’s main concerns are for her handsome twenty-two-year-old son Michel (Jean Marais), who is increasingly absent from the home. One day he returns to announce his engagement to Madeleine (Josette Day), a young woman who had recently broken off her affair with an older lover, who happens to be Georges. While Michel is in the dark concerning the relationship, Leonie is forced to act as a go-between for Georges, tasked with causing the dissolution of the engagement. However, this discord causes a ripple effect in the family and eventually untoward consequences.

By the time Cocteau had gotten around to Les Parents Terribles, it was during his most prolific period as a director. With the first chapter of his Orphic Trilogy behind him, as well as his timeless rendering of Beauty and the Beast (1946), Cocteau had already adapted his The Eagle with Two Heads in 1948, the results of which inspired him to change little about the stage version of Parents for the resulting film version. Instead, it would be the film’s nuanced production design which really enhanced Cocteau’s stage play, populated once again by its original cast (and reuniting the Beauty and the Beast of his earlier film with his muse Jean Marais and the soon-to-be-retired Josette Day).

By today’s standards, the potential salaciousness of Les Parents Terribles may seem rather diminished, but it retains a unique energy thanks to its portrait of hopelessly enmeshed post-WWII bourgeois family ties. Somewhere between the bedroom farces of Sacha Guitry and the incestuous melodrama of Louis Malle’s Damage (1992), Les Parents Terribles is a witty chamber piece of hierarchical values, where the surprise alliances between women serve as the sobering twists and turns of Cocteau’s creation.

Disc Review:

The Cohen Media Group resurrects Les Parents Terribles for its seventieth anniversary with an impressive new restoration. Picture and sound quality are impressive in this new transfer, which includes several bonus features, and a new introduction by Richard Pena.

Learning to Direct:
The Cohen Media Group includes this nine-minute interview with Assistant Director Claude Pinoteau, who shares his entry into directing and his memories of working with Cocteau on the film.

Camera Tests:
Sixteen minutes of footage from the original camera tests are included.

Film Review: ★★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc Review: ★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆