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Article: Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown.
- Article from:
- Cineaste
- Article date:
- June 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Cineaste Publishers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Is there an example in the history of cinema of a poet and writer turned filmmaker to compare with that of Jean Cocteau? One other name comes to mind--Pier Paolo Pasolini. But Cocteau's life, because it was longer and because he lived earlier, spans a larger, therefore richer, slice of cinematic history. Even so, Cocteau began making films only after attaining considerable fame as a poet, novelist, and playwright; he was over forty when he started work on Blood of a Poet (1930). Born in 1889, Cocteau very early won the reputation of an enfant terrible of letters. Friend of Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, Raymond Radiguet (who wrote Devil in the Flesh in 1918 at age fifteen and ...