Jean Cocteau's classic fairy tale remains one of the cinema's most enchanting and sensuous excursions into the realm of poetic fantasy. It is the story of Belle (Josette Day), who, in order to save her father, agrees to live with the hideous Beast (Jean Marais) in his castle in a great forest. Slowly, she grows to feel some emotion for him, and her love transforms him into a handsome prince. With its superb cinematography by Henri Alekan, splendid makeup creations and fantastic sets, Beauty and the Beast stands out as one of Cocteau's great successes--visually, it is a feast for the fairy-tale faithful. But Cocteau reverses the happy ending of his fairy-tale world by making the Beast's transformation a cause for regret. “My aim,” he has said “would be to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that is summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: ‘And they had many children.'”