- Paperback: 144 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Classics; New edition edition (7 Aug 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099455692
- ISBN-13: 978-0099455691
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 11 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 550,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Les enfants terribles
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'The lasting feeling that his work leaves is one of happiness; not of course in the sense that it excludes suffering, but because, in it, nothing is rejected, resented or regretted' W.H. Auden
Book Description
One of twelve indispensable classic titles you'll want to treasure, at a price that allows you to collect them all. The perfect introduction to the depth and breadth of the superlative Vintage Classics list.'The lasting feeling that his work leaves is one of happiness; not of course in the sense that it excludes suffering, but because, in it, nothing is rejected, resented or regretted' W. H. Auden
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although it took me a few pages to warm to Cocteau's ocasioanlly overdone prose, there is no denying the power of this novella.
Paul and Lise play "The Game" brilliantly, and follow it to a conclusion that in less sure hands would be melodramic but stays with you after reading.
Cocteau understands the mindset of children- perhaps people in geneal- on a fundamental level and has written a superb lttle book.
Paul and Lise play "The Game" brilliantly, and follow it to a conclusion that in less sure hands would be melodramic but stays with you after reading.
Cocteau understands the mindset of children- perhaps people in geneal- on a fundamental level and has written a superb lttle book.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This is a weird movie, in that there is a creative conflict between the director, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Jean Cocteau, the author of the novel and the screenplay, and the voice-over narrator.
Melville is responsible for some beautiful filming - the schoolboy fight at the beginning, the murder at the end - and though the material isn't his own, quite clearly it fits in with his recurring themes of loyalty and betrayal. He gives the film a narrative fluidity and grace.
What Cocteau brings is his usual self-pitying, pretentious narcissism, and his patronising attitude to his audience, which he regards as having to have everything spelt out to it. This is reflected in his voice-over, a thin, reedy hectoring voice which keeps telling you things you have already seen or already know.
The ultimate narcissism is in the casting of the Edouard Dermithe as the doomed sickly brother, Paul. Dermithe is a Cocteau regular, bears an alarming resemblance to him, and was eventually adopted as a son by him, although the triangle between the two of them and Cocteau's long-term lover Jean Marais was a lot more complicated than that suggests. Here he plays the oldest 16-year-old in the business.
He is matched by Nicole Stephane as Elisabeth, nearing 30 at the time she is meant to be the other orphaned teenager. The two of them play the kind of games better portrayed by those other two psychopathic siblings, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?". They are equally hammy, but without the camp relish of Bette'n'Joan.
The whole thing takes place in a kind of hermetically sealed unreal world where the kindly doctor pays for all their care and upkeep (wish my doctor did that!) and takes place in a huge renaissance chateau, rarely going outside. Other characters intrude on their private world. When Paul falls in love with Agathe (Renee Cosima, who also doubles as the rebellious schoolboy Dargelos), Elisabeth first lies to divert their affections, and then when her deception is discovered, kills Paul rather than give him up, before killing herself.
This is the stuff of penny dreadfuls, and the posturing philosophising Cocteau lays over it ("You need to be so bad life spits you out") doesn't disguise the thinness of the material.
Melville makes it seem better than it is, and we are at least blessed with one of the most powerful images in movies right at the end, as Elisabeth falls back through the fan-like screens. The image is emblematic of the whole movie, which is beautiful without substance.
Melville is responsible for some beautiful filming - the schoolboy fight at the beginning, the murder at the end - and though the material isn't his own, quite clearly it fits in with his recurring themes of loyalty and betrayal. He gives the film a narrative fluidity and grace.
What Cocteau brings is his usual self-pitying, pretentious narcissism, and his patronising attitude to his audience, which he regards as having to have everything spelt out to it. This is reflected in his voice-over, a thin, reedy hectoring voice which keeps telling you things you have already seen or already know.
The ultimate narcissism is in the casting of the Edouard Dermithe as the doomed sickly brother, Paul. Dermithe is a Cocteau regular, bears an alarming resemblance to him, and was eventually adopted as a son by him, although the triangle between the two of them and Cocteau's long-term lover Jean Marais was a lot more complicated than that suggests. Here he plays the oldest 16-year-old in the business.
He is matched by Nicole Stephane as Elisabeth, nearing 30 at the time she is meant to be the other orphaned teenager. The two of them play the kind of games better portrayed by those other two psychopathic siblings, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?". They are equally hammy, but without the camp relish of Bette'n'Joan.
The whole thing takes place in a kind of hermetically sealed unreal world where the kindly doctor pays for all their care and upkeep (wish my doctor did that!) and takes place in a huge renaissance chateau, rarely going outside. Other characters intrude on their private world. When Paul falls in love with Agathe (Renee Cosima, who also doubles as the rebellious schoolboy Dargelos), Elisabeth first lies to divert their affections, and then when her deception is discovered, kills Paul rather than give him up, before killing herself.
This is the stuff of penny dreadfuls, and the posturing philosophising Cocteau lays over it ("You need to be so bad life spits you out") doesn't disguise the thinness of the material.
Melville makes it seem better than it is, and we are at least blessed with one of the most powerful images in movies right at the end, as Elisabeth falls back through the fan-like screens. The image is emblematic of the whole movie, which is beautiful without substance.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Cocteau's Masterpiece of Imagination and Longing
5 April 2000
Format:Paperback
Cocteau's novel is gem of a book which deals with the power of make-believe to transport the characters into worlds of their own making. Specifically, Les Enfants Terribles tells the story of a brother and sister who, after the death of their mother, create a sanctuary in one enchanted room and via their active imaginations. These fantasies become the axis on which their lives revolve until it spirals out of control and ends in a climax befitting a Greek tragedy. Reading this book is like reliving a fever dream in which the reality and fantasy blur.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Almost as magical as the film.
21 Mar 2001
Format:Hardcover
'Les Enfants Terribles' is one of those great novels of childhood at which the French excel, full of vibrancy, caprice, terror, passion, danger, wonder, fun: its narrative is an allegory of that life-, body-, soul-changing move from childhood to adulthood.
But it is so much more. It is the great Surrealist novel, about the child-like way of looking at the dim, everyday world as marvellous, as new: a snow-blanketed street, a messy room, a trip to the seaside. It is a novel of rite, of theatre, of play; of the classical and the modern; a living Surrealist manifesto, where reality, dream and imagination conflate in a supreme act of transformation, as dependent on, yet transcending, the real world as the novel's heroes. It is poetry and imagination as King Midas; a moustache on a marble bust; the lightest and most profound book ever written.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful
NEVER RECEIVED ITEM
13 Aug 2009
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I NEVER receivd this item from the 3rd party seller. I WILL NEVER use this service again. I will go to my local Barnes/Nobles. I waited THREE weeks after the agreed upon date and have yet to see the product. BAD SERVICE!!!!!
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