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Les Enfants Terribles (Rosamond Lehmann Translation)
 
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Les Enfants Terribles (Rosamond Lehmann Translation) (Paperback)

by Jean Cocteau (Author), Rosamond Lehmann (Translator)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 144 pages
  • Publisher: The Harvill Press; New Ed edition (4 Nov 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1860466885
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860466885
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 598,636 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #13 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > L > Lehmann, Rosamond

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Product Description

Product Description

"Terrors they are, these lads of the Lycee Condorcet, and no mistake - the terrors of the Fifth...where the tenebrous instincts of childhood still predominate..." At home, Paul shares a private world with his sister Elisabeth, a world from which parents are tacitly excluded. Their room is where the Game is played, the Game being their own bizarre version of life. All that they do outside is effectively controlled by the rules of the Game. Elisabeth might be the dutiful daughter tending their sick, prematurely aged mother; Paul might be under the spell of his fellow student Dargelos, and then of a hapless friend of his sister's - but unfortunately what the rules of the Game prescribe is that two children must die... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

At home, Paul shares a private world with his sister Elisabeth, a world from which parents are tacitly excluded. Their enchanted room is where the Game is played, the Game being their own bizarre version of life. All that they do outside is effectively controlled by the rules of the Game: unfortunately, what the rules of the Game prescribe is that the two children must die...
'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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars superb, 21 May 2006
By me (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Les Enfants Terribles (Vintage Crucial Classics) (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.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Cocteau's to blame, 4 April 2009
By Peter Scott-presland "homopromos" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Les Enfants Terribles (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.

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