The Difficult, Ironic Historical past of 1975’s ‘The Beast’

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Welcome to The Queue — your day by day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the online. At the moment, we’re watching a video essay that explores how the controversial 1975 movie The Beast satirizes scandal cover-ups.

Should you’ve ever needed to know what would occur if Jean Cocteau was a intercourse maniac, I’ve bought nice — if extremely area of interest — information for you.

The Beast is directed by Walerian Borowczyk. a Polish director described in his New York Occasions obit as “a genius, a pornographer, and a genius who additionally occurred to be a pornographer.” The movie loosely adapts the nineteenth Century horror novella Lokis, which tells of a rich French household determined to marry their fail-son Mathurin de l’Esperance (Pierre Benedetti) to a decent younger girl. When such a marital alternative presents itself within the type of the rich Lucy (Lisbeth Hummel), the household’s patriarch is overjoyed. Now it’s only a matter of hiding the despicable legend that haunts the de l’Esperance household: an unholy union between an animal and a lady that has muddied the household’s gene pool.

Very similar to its supply materials, The Beast is mainly involved with the preoccupying dichotomy of Romanticism: the duality of man and beast, tradition and wilderness, nurture and nature. The movie additionally boasts a deliciously wealthy satirical bent, utilizing absurd and ridiculous perversions to underline the lengths corrupt powers will go to bury their scandals, with its crucial barbs pointed unambiguously in the direction of the Catholic church.

No small irony then that the movie was censored to excessive heaven, particularly within the UK the place the movie solely narrowly averted prosecution for obscenity and remained inconceivable to display for a lot of many years. Humorous how that appears to be a pattern with movies that criticize the hypocritical corruption of the catholic church, huh?

In case it wasn’t painfully apparent, a powerful abdomen and open thoughts are required to press on. Whereas a lot of the movie’s extra salacious moments have been judiciously omitted from the video essay. However we’d be remiss to not point out that The Beast‘s repute as a cinematic taboo is totally deserved (a great factor!). That stated if you end up intrigued by this preamble the video essay does embody spoilers, so if that type of factor units your neck hairs on edge think about your self duly warned!

Watch “The Beast (La Bête) – Criticising Scandal By way of Satire”:

Who made this?

This video essay on the satirical chunk of the controversial The Beast is by You Have Been Watching Movies. United Kingdom-based author Oliver Bagshaw produces the channel, creating video essays on an assortment of films, from cult to traditional strains of cinema historical past. You’ll be able to subscribe to their YouTube channel right here.

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Meg Shields is the common-or-garden farm boy of your goals and a senior contributor at Movie Faculty Rejects. She at the moment runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She can also be a curator for One Good Shot and a contract author for rent. Meg could be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).