Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Île-de-France, France on July 5th, 1889 and is the Novelist. At the age of 74, Jean Cocteau biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Jean Maurice Cocteau (born in 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French writer, playwright, writer, film, and critic.
Cocteau's books include Le Grand Écart (1923), Le Livre Blanc (1928), and Les Enfants Terribles (1949); and Les Parents Terribles (1948), Cote de Poet (1940); and Les Parents Terribles (1946), and The Blood of a Poet (1948), Le Livre Blanc (1941); and Testament of Orpheus (1969), which, as well as Blood of a Poet (1945), and Testament of à
AllMovie described him as "one of [the] avant-garde's most influential and influential filmmakers."
Early life
Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, a town near Paris, to Georges Cocteau and his partner, Eugénie Lecomte; a socially prominent Parisian family. When Cocteau was nine, his father, a lawyer and amateur painter, committed suicide. Cocteau's journey began and began a friendship with schoolmate Pierre Dargelos, who would reappear in Cocteau's career from 1900 to 1904. At fifteen, he escaped home. At nineteen, Aladdin's Lamp, his first collection of poems, was published. Cocteau was known in Bohemian literary circles as The Frivolous Prince, the name of a volume he published at twenty-two. "Any good line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City," Edith Wharton referred to him as a man.
Cocteau's early twenties became acquainted with writers Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Maurice Barrès. He collaborated with Le Dieu bleu in 1912, with Le Dieu bleu's Ballets Russes' principal dancers being Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky. Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver during World War I. It was during this period that he met Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, as well as many other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated. Sergei Diaghilev, the Russian impresario, persuaded Cocteau to write a scene for a ballet, which culminated in Parade in 1917. It was made by Diaghilev, with Picasso's set, Apollinaire's libretto, and Erik Satie's music. "With his skull shaved, the scar on his temple, and the bandage around his head, women would have gouged our eyes out with hairpins," Cocteau wrote.
Cocteau, a prominent promoter of avant-garde art, had a major influence on others' careers, including a group of composers named Les six. He and other members of Les six frequented Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a term that Cocteau's himself had a hand in choosing. In no small measure, the craziness was due in no small part to Cocteau's and his coworkers' presence.
He first met French poet Raymond Radiguet in 1918. They collaborated extensively, socialized, and enjoyed many journeys and holidays together, and enjoyed many vacations together. Radiguet was also exempted from military service, according to Cocteau. Cocteau, admiring Radiguet's exceptional literary talent, marketed his friend's work in his professional circle and arranged for the publication of Le Diable au corps by Grasset (a largely autobiographical account of an adulterous friendship between a married woman and a younger man), extending his fame to win the "Nouveau Monde" literary award. Any contemporaries and later commentators suspected there might have been a romantic element to their relationship. Cocteau himself was aware of this fact and worked tirelessly to refute the belief that their relationship was sexual in nature.
Cocteau's reaction to Radiguet's sudden death in 1923 is mixed, despondent, and prey to opium use. Opponents of the interpretation argue that he did not attend the funeral (he generally did not attend funerals) and then departed Paris with Diaghilev for a performance of Les noces (The Wedding) by the Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo. Cocteau's reaction was more characterized as one of "stupor and indignation" than a mistunement. Cocteau said his opium use at the time was just coincidental, due to a chance meeting with Louis Laloy, the Monte Carlo Opera's director, at Monte Carlo. Cocteau's opium use and his attempts to avoid dramatically altering his literary style. During a week of tense opium weaning, his most popular book, Les Enfants Terribles, was published in a week. In Opium: The journal of drug recovery, he retells the story of his drug detox in 1929. His book, which includes vivid pen-and-ink illustrations, alternates between his drug withdrawal experiences from yesterday and his present day observations of people and events in his world. Cocteau was aided in his recovery by his colleague and reporter, Catholic scholar Jacques Maritain. Cocteau made a temporary return to the Catholic Church sacraments under Maritain's clout. He returned to the church later in life and undertook a number of religious art projects.
Orphée, Cocteau's play, was staged in Paris on June 15th, 1926. It was quickly followed by an exhibit of drawings and "constructions" called Poésie plastique–objets, dessins. Cocteau wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, which had its first appearance in Paris on May 30th. Les Enfants terribles, one of his most celebrated and well-known works, was published in 1929.
Cocteau made his first film, The Blood of a Poet, which was on display in 1932. Although the film was now widely distributed as a surrealist film, the surrealists themselves did not accept it as a truly surrealist piece. Though this is one of Cocteau's best-known productions, his 1930s are best known for a number of stage plays, more than La Voix humaine and Les Parents terribles, which were a hit in the 19th century. La Machine infernale, Cocteau's stage adaptation of the Oedipus legend, is considered his finest theater work. During this period, Cocteau also published two volumes of journalism, including Mon Premier Voyage: Tour du Monde en 80 days, a neo-Jules Verne on the world travel reportage he produced for the newspaper Paris-Soir.
Cocteau maintained a distance from political movements throughout his life, even admitting to a friend that "my politics are non-existent." His only deeply held political convictions from the 1920s to the present were a pacifism and antiracism. He praised the French republic for being a haven for the persecuted, and praised Picasso's anti-war painting Guernica as a reminder that "Franco will always have his shoulder." After seeing the plight of colonized peoples during his travels, Cocteau signed a petition circulated by the Ligue internationale contre l'antisémitisme in France, protesting the rise of bigotry and antisemitism.
Despite the fact that Cocteau compared Adolf Hitler to an evil demiurge who planned to perpetrate a Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre against Jews, his colleague Arno Breker persuaded him that Hitler was a pacifist and patron of the arts with France's best interests in mind. Cocteau accused France of disrespect toward Hitler and speculated about the Führer's sexuality in his diary. In an essay titled 'Salut à Breker,' published in 1942, Cocteau lauded Breker's sculptures. Despite being cleared of any wrongdoing and having used his contacts to his failed attempt to rescue friends such as Max Jacob, this led him to his arrest after the war. Joseph Stalin would be dubbed "the only great politician of the period" later on as he got closer to communists like Louis Aragon.
Le Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for and starring Édith Piaf in 1940, was hugely popular.
Cocteau's later years are mainly associated with his films. Cocteau's films, the bulk of which he wrote and directed, were particularly influential in introducing the avant-garde in French cinema and in some ways influenced by the upcoming French New Wave style.
Beauty and the Beast (1946), Les Parents obstructive (1948), and Orpheus (1949) were among his best known films after following The Blood of a Poet (1930). Le Testament d'Orphée (The Testament of Orpheus) (1960), Picasso and matador Luis Miguel Domingun's last film, as well as Yul Brynner, who also contributed to finance the film, was featured in Le Testament d'Orphée (The Testament of Orpheus).
Cocteau, a 1945-born designer, was one of many designers who created sets for the Théâtre de la Mode. When preparing Tribute to René Clair, he was inspired by filmmaker René Clair: I Married a Witch. In his entry for February 1945, the maquette is described as "Journal 1942-1955":
With mural paintings by Cocteau in 1956, the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer was restored to life. He also decorated the wedding hall at the Hôtel de Ville in Menton the following year.
Jean Cocteau never denied his homosexuality. He was the author of the mildly homoergic and semi-autobiographical Le Livre blanc (translated as The White Paper or The White Book), which was published anonymously in 1928. He never denounced its authorship, and a new edition of the novel includes his foreword and drawings.The novel begins:
Often his art, whether literary (Les enfants), graphic (erotic drawings, book illustration, paintings), or cinematographic (The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Beauty, or Cinema), is characterized by homosexual undertones, homoetization/symbolism, or camp. In 1947, Paul Morihien published a clandestine edition of Querelle de Brest by Jean Genet, which contained 29 evocative drawings by Cocteau. Several albums of Cocteau's homogeneity have been available to the general public in recent years.
Cocteau is widely believed to have links with Raymond Radiguet, Jean Desbordes, Marcel Khill, and Panama Al Brown.
Cocteau is rumoured to have had a brief affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the granddaughter of a Romanov Grand Duke and herself a former actor, model, and former wife of couturier Lucien Lelong in the 1930s.
Cocteau's longest-serving friendships were with French actress Jean Marais and Édouard Dermit, whom Cocteau officially adopted. Cocteau Cast Marais (1943), The Eternal Return (1943), Beauty and the Beast (1946), Ruy Blas (1947), and Orpheus (1949).
Cocteau died of a heart attack at his château in Milly-la-Fort, Essonne, France, on October 11, 1963, at the age of 74. Édith Piaf, a French singer, died the day before, but it was announced on the morning of Cocteau's day of death; it is almost certainly apocryphal that his heart was broken upon learning of Piaf's death. Cocteau's health had already been in decline for several months, and he had suffered with a serious heart attack on April 22, 1963. Author Roger Peyrefitte's suggestion that the reason for this decline in health has been provided by a breach with his longtime companion, socialite, and prominent patron Francine Weisweiller, who reports that Cocteau was devastated by a crime linked to a minor writer's affair. Weisweiller and Cocteau did not reconcile until just after Cocteau's death.
Cocteau is buried beneath the floor of the Chapelle Saint-Blaise des Simples in Milly-la-Fort, according to his wishes. "I stay with you" says the epitaph on his gravestone set in the chapel's floor ("Je reste avec vous").
Private life
Jean Cocteau never denied his homosexuality. He was the creator of the mildly homogenetic and semi-autobiographical Le Livre blanc (translated as The White Paper or The White Book), which was released anonymously in 1928. He never criticized its authorship, and a later version of the novel includes his foreword and drawings.The novel begins:
Frequently his work, whether literary (Les enfants terribles), graphic (erotic drawings, book illustration, paintings), or cinematographic (The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Beauty, and the Beast), is pervaded with homosexual undertones, homoeotic imagery/symbolism, or camp. In 1947, Paul Morihien published a clandestine version of Querelle de Brest by Jean Genet, which included 29 explicit erotic drawings by Cocteau. Many albums of Cocteau's homoerotica have been released to the general public in recent years.
Cocteau is widely believed to have dealt with Raymond Radiguet, Jean Desbordes, Marcel Khill, and Panama Al Brown.
Cocteau is accused of having had a brief affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the daughter of a Romanov Grand Duke and herself a sometime actor, model, and former wife of couturier Lucien Lelong in the 1930s.
Cocteau's longest-lasting friendships with French actress Jean Marais and Édouard Dermit, whom Cocteau officially adopted, were among Cocteau's long-term friendships. In The Eternal Return (1943), Cocteau cast Marais, Beauty and the Beast (1946), Ruy Blas (1947), and Orpheus (1949).
On October 11, 1963, Cocteau died of a heart attack at his château in Milly-la-Forte, France, at the age of 74. Édith Piaf, a French singer, died the day before, but it was reported on Cocteau's day of death that it was almost certainly apocryphal, that his heart skipped after learning of Piaf's death. Cocteau's health had already been in decline for several months, and he had suffered from a severe heart attack on April 22, 1963. Author Roger Peyrefitte's more convincing explanation for Cocteau's health has been given as a result of an affair she was having with a minor writer, who says the reason for the change in health has been tragic. Weisweiller and Cocteau didn't reconcile until just after Cocteau's death.
Cocteau is buried beneath the floor of the Chapelle Saint-Blaise des Simples in Milly-la-Fort, according to his wishes. "I remain with you" reads the epitaph on the chapel's floor ("Je reste avec vous").
Early career
Cocteau became acquainted with writers Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Maurice Barrès in his early 20s. He worked with Léon Bakst on Le Dieu bleu for the Ballets Russes in 1912; the principal dancers were Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky. Cocteau, a World War II ambulance pilot, served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. This was the time when he met poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso, and Amedeo Modigliani, as well as many other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated. Sergei Diaghilev, a Russian impresario, begged Cocteau to write a scene for a ballet, which culminated in Parade in 1917. Diaghilev, set by Picasso, Apollinaire's libretto, and Erik Satie's music were among the performances. "With his skull shaved, the scar on his temple, and the bandage around his head, we might have gouged our eyes out with hairpins," Cocteau wrote.
Cocteau, a major promoter of avant-garde art, had a major influence on others' work, including a group of composers named Les six. He and other Les Six members frequented Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a word that Cocteau himself had a hand in choosing. In no small measure, the success was due in no small measure to Cocteau's presence and his associates.
He met Raymond Radiguet, a French poet, in 1918. They worked closely, socialized, and undertook many journeys and vacations together. Radiguet was also excluded from military service by Cocteau, so he was also exempted from military service. Cocteau, admiring Radiguet's outstanding literary talent, marketed his acquaintance's work in his artistic circle and arranged for the publication of Le Diable au corps by Grasset (a largely autobiographical story of an adulterous marriage between a married woman and a younger man), extending his reach to receive the "Nouveau Monde" literary award. Any contemporaries and later commentators believed there may have been a romantic element to their union. Cocteau himself was aware of this belief and worked to refute the belief that their relationship was sexual in nature.
Cocteau's reaction to Radiguet's death in 1923 is disputed, with some reporting that it left him stunned, despondent, and prey to opium use. Opponents of this interpretation insist he did not attend the funeral (he often did not attend funerals) and then left Paris with Diaghilev for a performance of Les noces (The Wedding) by the Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo. Cocteau's reaction was characterized as one of "stupor and indignation" much later. Cocteau said his opium use at the time was solely coincidental, due to a chance meeting with Louis Laloy, the Monte Carlo opera's administrator. Cocteau's opium use and his attempts to avoid drastically altering his literary style. Les Enfants Terribles, his most popular book, was published in a week during a tense opium weaning process. In Opium: The journal of drug rehabilitation, he retells the story of his opium withdrawal in 1929. His book, which includes vivid pen-and-ink illustrations, alternates between his drug use from yesterday and his latest concerns about people and events in his world. Throughout his recovery, Cocteau's companion and reporter, Catholic scholar Jacques Maritain, was assisting him. Cocteau made a brief return to the Catholic Church's sacraments under Maritain's influence. He returned to the Church later in life and undertook a number of religious art projects.
Orphée, Cocteau's play Orphée, was presented in Paris on June 15th. It was soon followed by an exhibit of drawings and "constructions" called Poésie plastique–objets, dessins. The libretto for Igor Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, which had its first appearance in Paris's Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in 1927, was written by Cocteau. The novel Les Enfants tragics, one of his most celebrated and well-known works, was published in 1929.
In 1930, Cocteau made his first film The Blood of a Poet, which was first seen in 1932. Despite being widely accepted as a surrealist film, the surrealists themselves did not accept it as a truly surprising work. Although this is one of Cocteau's best known productions, his 1930s were more notable for a number of stage performances, particularly La Voix humaine and Les Parents, which was a big hit. La Machine infernale, Cocteau's stage adaptation of the Oedipus legend, is considered his best theater work ever created. During this period, Cocteau also published two volumes of journalism, including Mon Premier Voyage: Tour du Monde en 80 days, a neo-Jules Verne around the world travel reportage he made for the newspaper Paris-Soir.
Cocteau maintained a distance from political movements throughout his life, telling a friend that "my politics are non-existent." His only firmly held political convictions from the 1920s to the 1950s were a pronounced pacifism and antiracism. He praised the French republic for being a haven for the persecuted and celebrated Picasso's anti-war painting Guernica as a reminder that "Franco will always keep his hand." Cocteau's white skin was "ashamed of his white skin" after witnessing the plight of colonized peoples on his travels in 1940.
Though Cocteau compared Adolf Hitler to an evil demiurge who planned to perpetrate a Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of Jews, his colleague Arno Breker told him that Hitler was a pacifist and patron of the arts with France's best interests in mind. Cocteau accused France of disrespect toward Hitler and speculated about the Führer's sexuality in his diary. In an essay titled 'Salut à Breker,' published in 1942, Cocteau lauded Breker's sculptures. This caused him to be arrested on suspicion of coordination following the war, though he was not guilty of any wrongdoing or misused his contacts to his unsuccessful attempt to help friends like Max Jacob. Later, after growing closer to communists such as Louis Aragon, Cocteau would name Joseph Stalin as "the only great politician of the period."
Le Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for and starring Édith Piaf, was hugely popular in 1940.
Cocteau's later years were mostly associated with his films. Cocteau's films, the majority of which he wrote and directed, were especially important in the introduction of the avant-garde in French cinema and inspired to a certain extent the upcoming French New Wave style.
Beauty and the Beast (1946), Les Parents insurgents (1948), and Orpheus (1949) were two of his best known films after The Blood of a Poet (1930). Le Testament d'Orphée (The Testament of Orpheus), Picasso and Matador Luis Miguel Domingu'n's final film, as well as Yul Brynner, who also helped finance the film.
Cocteau was one of several designers who created sets for the Théâtre de la Mode in 1945. When delivering Tribute to René Clair: I Married a Witch, he was inspired by filmmaker René Clair. In his entry for February 1945, the maquette is described in his "Journal 1942-1945":
In 1956, Cocteau adorned the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer with mural paintings. He also decorated the marriage hall at the Hôtel de Ville in Menton the following year.
Jean Cocteau had never disguised his homosexuality. He was the author of Le Livre blanc, the mildly homoemic and semi-autobiographical book that was published anonymously in 1928. He never denied its authorship, and a new book in its sequel includes his foreword and drawings.The novel begins:
Frequently his writing, whether literary (Les enfants perdus), graphic (erotic drawings, book illustration, paintings), or cinematographic (The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Beauty, and the Beast), is brimming with homosexual undertones, homoerotic imagery/symbolism, or camp. In 1947, Paul Morihien published a clandestine edition of Querelle de Brest by Jean Genet, which included 29 elaborate erotic drawings by Cocteau. Several albums of Cocteau's homoerotica have been available to the general public in recent years.
Cocteau is widely believed to have interacted with Raymond Radiguet, Jean Desbordes, Marcel Khill, and Panama Al Brown.
Cocteau is reported to have had a brief affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the daughter of a Romanov Grand Duke and herself a sometime actor, model, and former wife of couturier Lucien Lelong in the 1930s.
Cocteau's longest-lasting friendships with French actress Jean Marais and Édouard Dermit, whom Cocteau officially adopted, were among Cocteau's longest-serving couples. In The Eternal Return (1943), Cocteau cast Marais, Beauty and the Beast (1946), Ruy Blas (1947), and Orpheus (1949).
Cocteau died of a heart attack at his château in Milly-la Forêt, Essonne, France, on October 11, 1963, at the age of 74. Édith Piaf, a French musician, died the day before, but it was announced on the morning of Cocteau's day of death, but it is almost certainly apocryphal that his heart was broken upon learning of Piaf's death. Cocteau's health had already been in decline for several months, and he had suffered with a serious heart attack on April 22, 1963. Author Roger Peyrefitte's suggestion that this health condition stemmed from a hack of Cocteau's longtime friend, socialite, and prominent patron Francine Weisweiller's demise as a result of an affair she was having with a minor writer has been a contributing factor. Weisweiller and Cocteau didn't reconcile until just after Cocteau's death.
Cocteau is buried beneath the floor of the Chapelle Saint-Blaise des Simples in Milly-la-Fort, according to his wishes. "I remain with you" is the epitaph on his gravestone laid in the chapel's floor. (Je reste avec vous)