03-17-17
Am I suffering from false memory? I could have sworn that, when I saw Cocteau's film on the big screen when it was not many years old, and again on television when it was not much older, there was a very unsatisfactory shot - stop-frame animation, no doubt - in which the Beast's face was stripped of fur piece by piece, transforming it into the Prince. I also believe I read somewhere that Cocteau was unhappy with it and wished he could do it again. Well, in the Criterion dvd the shot is not there. (The reverse transformation - of Avenant into Beast - is quite different.) Did Cocteau at some point remove the shot? Or am I deluded?