The Beast (1975)

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Movie
German title The beast
Original title La Bete
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1975
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Walerian Borowczyk
script Walerian Borowczyk
production Anatole Dauman
music Michel Laurent,
Jean-Pierre Ruh
camera Marcel Grignon ,
Bernard Daillencourt
cut Walerian Borowczyk
occupation

The Beast (Original title: La Bête ) is a French erotic - Drama from 1975 by director Walerian Borowczyk .

action

In order to avert the financial ruin of his noble family after years of mismanagement, the Marquis de l'Esperance only sees the solution in the marriage of his son Mathurin to the American heiress Lucy Broadhurst. An old curse, however, says that Mathurin's marriage should mean his death. Finally, Lucy and her aunt Virginia Broadhurst arrive at the castle in France, where preparations for the wedding are already in full swing. As Lucy looks around the property, she discovers the painting of Romilda de l'Esperance, an ancestor of the family who was raped two hundred years earlier by a mixed wolf and bear roaming the neighboring woods. She is fascinated by the story and inspired by Romilda's diaries and old drawings, she dreams of this encounter the night before the wedding. When she wakes up drenched in sweat, she is not sure whether it was really just a dream.

Publications

The film premiered in January 1975 at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in France. It was shown for the first time in German cinemas on February 6, 1981. The DVD launch in Germany was on August 14, 2009, the Blu-Ray launch on May 22, 2015.

Reviews

“You have to be a little aficionado to experience 'La Bête - The Beast'. Anyone who has problems with the explicit depiction of perverated sexuality will not be able to do anything with Walerian Borowczyk's infamous scandal film. However, if you are able to think outside the box, you can enjoy a Freudian baroque fairy tale, which is extremely sensitive, but by no means masterfully savoring the boundaries between reality and dream. "

- moviebreak.de

“'La Bête' is undoubtedly obscene. Borowczyk, however, conjures up a uniquely intoxicating atmosphere and increases the hustle and bustle into the grotesquely ironic. "

“[...] The 'New York Times' described the film at the time as a 'dirty concoction of fairy tales, Freudian folly and an Eight Avenue peep show'. And the 'Washington Post' saw the Polish film as a 'hairy porno label' and classified 'La Bête' (original title) as 'a half-baked mixture of above-average horror film and intrusive soft porn with a hardcore touch'. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. cf. moviebreak.de
  2. cf. cinema.de
  3. The Myth Lives: Beauty and the Beast. On: dw.com .