Cocteau’s ‘Les Parents Terribles’ Restored for Oct. 30 Release

     

 

COHEN FILM COLLECTION RELEASES FRENCH MASTER
JEAN COCTEAU’S ‘LES PARENTS TERRIBLES’
ON BLU-RAY, DVD AND DIGITAL
 
“Astonishingly dynamic … melodrama of the highest order” 
– TIME OUT LONDON

Cohen Film Collection announces the release of Jean Cocteau’s masterpiece LES PARENTS TERRIBLES on Blu-ray, DVD and digital platforms on October 30, 2018. 

Starring French icon Jean Marais, the recently restored film was re-released theatrically by the Cohen Film Collection this spring to mark its 70th anniversary.

In this heartbreaking drama based on Cocteau’s highly successful stage play, a mother smothers her grown son with boyish love. When the son (played by Cocteau regular Jean Marais) meets a girl and leaves the family circle, the mother flies into a rage. But when the young man tells his father, it sets off another drama – she is none other than the girl (Josette Day, star of Cocteau’s classic Beauty and the Beast)the father has been secretly seeing. Tragedy strikes in this time-honored tale of fledglings leaving the family nest.

LES PARENTS TERRIBLES, originally released in 1948, stands in the middle of Jean Cocteau’s long and prolific career as poet, playwright, novelist, artist and filmmaker, whose Beauty and the Beast, The Blood of a Poet and Testament of Orpheusstand as cinematic monuments to his singular genius. The film received universal critical praise immediately upon its arrival, with famed critic and film theorist André Bazin saying Cocteau had achieved “pure cinema.” Cocteau himself said, “I must admit that LES PARENTS TERRIBLES is, cinematically speaking, my great success.”

Today’s leading critics continue to praise the film:

Alan Scherstuhl of The Village Voicecalled it “alive at every moment to the possibilities of the screen.” 
The Los Angeles Times‘ Robert Abele said, “Cocteau’s fluid mastery of the material brings aesthetic sanity to the psychological conflicts.”
Glenn Kenny, writing in The New York Times, said, “The fluidity of the shooting and cutting … demonstrates Cocteau’s unique command of the medium.”

The Cohen Film Collection’s Blu-ray and DVD of LES PARENTS TERRIBLES will both include a theatrical re-release trailer, original camera tests, a filmed introduction and other extras.

LES PARENTS TERRIBLES
Street date: October 30, 2018
SRP: $25.99 (Blu-ray), $19.99 (DVD)
Running time: 100 minutes (plus extras)
In French, with English subtitles
Not rated

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