Why isn’t every movie a strange fantasy that takes place a million miles from reality? What other good use for cameras, lights and actors could be there be aside from creating other worlds? Those are the main questions that director Jean Cocteau seems to ask in his eye-filling adaptation of the old fairy tale. It’s aged like wine. Many in the European avant garde scene of the time LOVED movies. They were fascinated by the possibilities of editing and photography in creating dream-like, revolutionary works—and poet/playwright Cocteau was one of them. Much like how a person might walk into a movie theater and hopefully see something stunning and unexpected, that’s what happens when a young woman winds up in a remote castle occupied by a hermit who looks like a large, upright dog with fangs and covered in fur. The castle is a metaphor for cinema. Its light fixtures are living human arms holding torches and the castle’s decorative carvings are expressive human faces, which play like a metaphor for actors in the process, as well as lighting. Meanwhile, mirrors tend to reflect the person’s personality more than their reality (one woman looks into a mirror and sees a monkey staring back at her) and settings magically transform to other places in an instant, which are metaphors for editing. Film is a drug and Cocteau is sky-high on it here. To his credit, he remains lucid enough to tell the story. The result is one of the most accessible old school arthouse classics and maybe the most internationally beloved French film of its time. It’s simple on the surface, but there’s so much beneath.