Les Parents terribles (1948) - film review

When Michel, aged 22, reveals that he is in love, his parents are horrified.  His overly-possessive mother, Yvonne-Sophie, cannot believe that her son could love anyone other than her, whilst his father, Georges, is not pleased to learn that his son’s sweetheart turns out to be his own mistress, Madeleine.  The parents appeal to Aunt Léo to help separate the young lovers, but their scheme soon backfires...

Whilst Jean Cocteau is generally best remembered for his extraordinary artistic flights of fancy (amply illustrated by his 1946 film La Belle et la bête), he was also remarkably adept at handling more down-to-earth subjects, particularly those involving the darker side of human experience.  His most notable success in the latter was his play “Les parents terribles” which, having proved popular as a theatre production, found even greater popularity as a film, which Cocteau himself directed.

By the time Cocteau came to make this film, he was an experienced director, with two artistically accomplished full-length films and a short surrealist film under his belt.   Whilst Les Parents terribles lacks the stunning visual feel of Cocteau’s previous films, it is nonetheless a compelling work, suffused with the poetry for which the great man is renowned.

The film retains the three-act structure of the play on which it is based, with just two sets and five characters.  Yet, thanks to some ingenious photography and staging, watching the film offers a very different experience to watching a piece of theatre.  In many ways, the film stands apart, not just from Cocteau’s other films, but from cinema in general. It is almost as if Jean Cocteau had set out to invent a new form of art, the "cinematic play", something which is neither theatre nor film drama, but somewhere in between.

Cocteau’s artistic ingenuity is exemplified by how he uses his two sets to define the film, adding depth to the characters whilst laying on a sinister Freudian subtext.  In contrast to Madeleine’s spacious, modern open-plan apartment, where young love is seen to blossom, the terrible parents and their son live in a cramped, over-dressed suite of rooms which are stiflingly claustrophobic.   The latter serves to emphasise the gruesomely repressive nature of the relationship of the young son, his parents and his aunt, and the longer we stay in these rooms, the queasier we feel.

Jean Marais (looking surprisingly young for a 35 year old) is entirely convincing as the young innocent in this nest of vipers, unable to see anything wrong with his suspiciously incestuous relationship with his manipulative mother.  Josette Day (Marais’ co-star in La Belle et la bête) is attractive in her role, but it is really her elders -  particularly Yvonne de Bray and Gabrielle Dorziat – who are most memorable, and not just because they have the most interesting parts.

The terrible parents of the film’s title are truly terrible, motivated by spite, selfishness and paranoia.  Yet they are also grotesque caricatures, something which prevents us from losing sympathy with them entirely.  With the references to incest, Cocteau alludes to something ugly and terrifying, but rather than confront the matter head on (as a social realist would do), he twists it into a black comedy.  More than anything, the film is a well-honed satire against the sham shallow world of Bourgeois respectability  -  and that was shocking enough for the time the film was made.

For all its apparent simplicity, Les Parents terribles seems to reveal a great deal about its creator, and this is its most fascinating aspect.   Was Cocteau’s motivation for writing the play and making the film fuelled by contemporary society’s attitudes towards his homosexuality?  Perhaps he is using this play to tell polite society it has infinitely more to be ashamed of than he, particularly in the way it corrupts and abuses innocents.

Whatever Cocteau’s motives behind this work, it remains one of his great artistic achievements, one which reveals a profound humanity and offers some valuable insights into his inordinately complex and creative mind.

© James Travers 2003

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