The Art of Cinema

For more than 30 years, Jean Cocteau maintained a passionate affair with the moving image. To him, film was a visionary dream-like medium, a glimpse of the phantoms that haunted the poet throughout his life. This posthumous collection of writings illuminates Cocteau's work for the cinema, with detailed discussions of his aims, responses to criticism and his reflections on the relationship between poetry, theatre and film. He also comments on the movie stars he admires - Marlene Dietrich, James Dean, Brigitte Bardot - together with such great directors as Georges Franju, Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles.