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Cocteau Films Come to HofstraDavid S. PushkinAssistant ProfessorNew College

This October, with the assistance of agenerous gift from the Florence

Gould Foundation, the Hofstra CulturalCenter presented “A Pen of Light: The Films of Jean Cocteau.”Commemorating the 40th anniversaryof Cocteau’s death, the conference isboth a film retrospective and anexchange of new ideas. NewCollege and the Hofstra Museumhad significant roles as supportersand instigators in the development of “A Pen of Light…” The Hofstra Museum holds acollection of artwork by JeanCocteau that has not been exhibited until now. This is an aptexcuse for an exhibition, but whya film retrospective?

Jean Cocteau was a poet. He practiced his poetry in manymediums; film was only one. Hewas an interdisciplinary artist,who searched for the clearestvoice in each of thedisciplines/mediums in which heworked. He claimed never to mixmediums, but rather to exploreeach in its purest sense. In thisway he treated artistic media asdisciplines. Cocteau wrote poems,novels, librettos and plays, andmade drawings, films, murals,mosaics, paintings and ceramics.

The work of Jean Cocteau combines akeen understanding of the deep relationship between creative arts andhumanities. New College providesHofstra University with such a focuseddiversity. Perhaps “inter-relation” moreaccurately describes the interdiscipli-nary approach taken at New College.Jean Cocteau would have made anexcellent New College faculty member.

We thank the Florence GouldFoundation for recognizing the specialopportunity, 40 years posthumously, toexamine the films of Jean Cocteau, andthe Hofstra Cultural Center for its commitment to create this event. Thetiming of this conference afforded us thechance to understand Cocteau as an

artist whose life and career were shapedby the same forces that we mayencounter: new technologies, war, political crises and paradigm shifts.

Jean Cocteau was born in 1889, thesame year that Thomas Edison andW.K.L. Dickson were taking pictureswith their new camera called theKinetograph. The following year theirKinetoscope machine enabled the firstviewing of successive “moving”

pictures. Kinetoscope parlours wereopened in American cities in 1894. In1895 Charles Pathé brought this technology to Paris. On September 28,1895, the first projection of films to apaying audience was given at the GrandCafé, Boulevard des Capucines in Paris(O’Leary 11). Cocteau was 6 years old.

The work of Jean Cocteau wasinfluenced by early cinema, by thephonograph, the telephone and themicrophone. The early Cocteau wasthoroughly modern. He reinventedthe Greek chorus into a single,sometimes mechanical voice (Ade2). He used devices such as doppel-gangers and mirrors in his fiction asa bridge between natural and supernatural worlds. For Cocteau,machinery also served as a transforming device between twoworlds. Imagine the hallucinatoryeffect of merging reflections on thewindows of passing trains (Wall-Romana 6).

Cocteau wrote poems and a novelabout World War I. His own experience was that of a volunteerambulance attendant. He admiredsoldiers and airmen and wasintrigued by airplanes.

Cocteau was an active participant inthe development of the avant-garde inParis. He flirted with the dadaists andbefriended painters, musicians, writers,composers, playwrights and poets fromboth Montmartre and Montparnasse.Essentially always a society poet,Cocteau took advantage of the patronage system. From 1929 until 1932he completed a commission by theVicomte Charles de Noailles to createhis first well-known film, “The Blood ofa Poet.”

Jean Cocteau, Jean Marais and Josette Day during shooting of Beauty and the Beast (1945).

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In the same year (1929) he entered a clin-ic to cure from an opium addiction. Whilein the clinic he completed his second novel, Les enfants terribles or TheHoly Terrors. It was 10 years from thecompletion of The Blood of a Poet beforeCocteau worked on another film. Cocteauwon favors in Nazi-occupied Paris. Hewrote the screenplays for The PhantomBaron in 1942 and The Eternal Return in1943 then continued to make his ownfilm, Beauty and the Beast, in 1945-46.

He received negative criticism in theVichy press during the war. After thewar he was exonerated of collabo-ration with the Germans. Thoughhe maintained friendships on bothsides, Cocteau remained true tohis own muse. Beauty and the Beastbecame one of the first examplesof film d’auteur, or a film to beknown by its director. (Hitchcockfilms reached this status in the 1950s.)

Jean Cocteau created most of hisfilms between 1946 and 1950.Each year he turned one of hisplays into a film. The most famouswas Orpheus in 1949. In 1950 hesuccessfully collaborated withdirector Jean-Pierre Melville tobring his novel Les enfants terriblesto the screen. The star of the film,Nicole Stéphane, was named the Hofstra Cultural Center’s Joseph G. Astman DistinguishedConference Artist.

Madame Stéphane, whose realname was Nicole de Rothschild,produced the film with the help ofher cousin Alec Weisweiller. Alec’swife, Francine, became a closefriend of Jean Cocteau and becamehis last important patron. Cocteau spentmuch of his time in the 1950s at theWeisweiller home in the south ofFrance, la villa Santo Sospir.

Madame Carole Weisweiller was one ofthe keynote speakers at the HofstraCultural Center conference. She told usthat villa Santo Sospir was purchased for

a modest fee at the end of the war as agift from her father to her mother for surviving the Holocaust. Her grandmother perished in Auschwitz.

Carole Weisweiller’s presence at ourconference was instrumental in bringingus in contact with a Jean Cocteau thatwas more than enigma. We were able tofeel the human side of an artist whosereputation may or may not have survived the war. Carole Weisweillerhelps Cocteau survive through a clearerunderstanding of his work and a closerproximity to his person.

Carole was 8 years old during the making of Les enfants terribles, whichwas filmed in a house that was built byher great-grandparents, lost during thewar and then reclaimed by her fatherfrom the government after the war. Shespent her adolescent years watchingCocteau fill her home with murals,mosaics, tapestries and ceramics.

For Carole, the real Cocteau was a manof joyous creative inspiration. “JeanCocteau never stopped working,” sheexplained. “He was always drawing.”

The Hofstra Cultural Center, HofstraMuseum and New College of HofstraUniversity in cooperation with the Filmand Liberal Arts Departments at RhodeIsland School of Design, the FlorenceGould Foundation, Cultural Services ofthe French Embassy in New York, theFrench Institute Alliance Française andthe Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington,Long Island, hosted the conference “A

Pen of Light: The Films of JeanCocteau” from October 1 to 4, 2003.

The program included screenings ofall of Cocteau’s own films and mostof the films for which he wrote thescreenplays. We also includedscreenings of three documentariesabout Cocteau, including one hemade himself called La Villa SantoSospir. The conference covered topics such as experimental film,surrealism, romanticism, classicism,behind the scenes during film production and psychological, mythical and political interpretation.

The conference began onWednesday, October 1, with theopening of an exhibition of photographs in the Rochelle andIrwin A. Lowenfeld Conference andExhibition Hall on the 10th floor ofthe Joan and Donald E. AxinnLibrary titled “In the Eye of theCamera: Jean Cocteau in the Southof France.” Both contributors of thework in the show, Madame CaroleWeisweiller and photographerLucien Clergue, were present atthe reception. On Thursday,

October 3, the conference banquet fea-tured a guest appearance by composerNed Rorem, whose own work takesinspiration from Cocteau and who alsocollaborated with Cocteau in his twocompositions “Visits to St. Elizabeth’s”and “Anna la bonne.” “Anna la bonne”was performed at the conference ban-quet by Hofstra student Elisa

Jean Marais and Josette Day from Beauty and the Beast (1946).

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In the same year (1929) he entered a clin-ic to cure from an opium addiction. Whilein the clinic he completed his second novel, Les enfants terribles or TheHoly Terrors. It was 10 years from thecompletion of The Blood of a Poet beforeCocteau worked on another film. Cocteauwon favors in Nazi-occupied Paris. Hewrote the screenplays for The PhantomBaron in 1942 and The Eternal Return in1943 then continued to make his ownfilm, Beauty and the Beast, in 1945-46.

He received negative criticism in theVichy press during the war. After thewar he was exonerated of collabo-ration with the Germans. Thoughhe maintained friendships on bothsides, Cocteau remained true tohis own muse. Beauty and the Beastbecame one of the first examplesof film d’auteur, or a film to beknown by its director. (Hitchcockfilms reached this status in the 1950s.)

Jean Cocteau created most of hisfilms between 1946 and 1950.Each year he turned one of hisplays into a film. The most famouswas Orpheus in 1949. In 1950 hesuccessfully collaborated withdirector Jean-Pierre Melville tobring his novel Les enfants terriblesto the screen. The star of the film,Nicole Stéphane, was named the Hofstra Cultural Center’s Joseph G. Astman DistinguishedConference Artist.

Madame Stéphane, whose realname was Nicole de Rothschild,produced the film with the help ofher cousin Alec Weisweiller. Alec’swife, Francine, became a closefriend of Jean Cocteau and becamehis last important patron. Cocteau spentmuch of his time in the 1950s at theWeisweiller home in the south ofFrance, la villa Santo Sospir.

Madame Carole Weisweiller was one ofthe keynote speakers at the HofstraCultural Center conference. She told usthat villa Santo Sospir was purchased for

a modest fee at the end of the war as agift from her father to her mother for surviving the Holocaust. Her grandmother perished in Auschwitz.

Carole Weisweiller’s presence at ourconference was instrumental in bringingus in contact with a Jean Cocteau thatwas more than enigma. We were able tofeel the human side of an artist whosereputation may or may not have survived the war. Carole Weisweillerhelps Cocteau survive through a clearerunderstanding of his work and a closerproximity to his person.

Carole was 8 years old during the making of Les enfants terribles, whichwas filmed in a house that was built byher great-grandparents, lost during thewar and then reclaimed by her fatherfrom the government after the war. Shespent her adolescent years watchingCocteau fill her home with murals,mosaics, tapestries and ceramics.

For Carole, the real Cocteau was a manof joyous creative inspiration. “JeanCocteau never stopped working,” sheexplained. “He was always drawing.”

The Hofstra Cultural Center, HofstraMuseum and New College of HofstraUniversity in cooperation with the Filmand Liberal Arts Departments at RhodeIsland School of Design, the FlorenceGould Foundation, Cultural Services ofthe French Embassy in New York, theFrench Institute Alliance Française andthe Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington,Long Island, hosted the conference “A

Pen of Light: The Films of JeanCocteau” from October 1 to 4, 2003.

The program included screenings ofall of Cocteau’s own films and mostof the films for which he wrote thescreenplays. We also includedscreenings of three documentariesabout Cocteau, including one hemade himself called La Villa SantoSospir. The conference covered topics such as experimental film,surrealism, romanticism, classicism,behind the scenes during film production and psychological, mythical and political interpretation.

The conference began onWednesday, October 1, with theopening of an exhibition of photographs in the Rochelle andIrwin A. Lowenfeld Conference andExhibition Hall on the 10th floor ofthe Joan and Donald E. AxinnLibrary titled “In the Eye of theCamera: Jean Cocteau in the Southof France.” Both contributors of thework in the show, Madame CaroleWeisweiller and photographerLucien Clergue, were present atthe reception. On Thursday,

October 3, the conference banquet fea-tured a guest appearance by composerNed Rorem, whose own work takesinspiration from Cocteau and who alsocollaborated with Cocteau in his twocompositions “Visits to St. Elizabeth’s”and “Anna la bonne.” “Anna la bonne”was performed at the conference ban-quet by Hofstra student Elisa

Jean Marais and Josette Day from Beauty and the Beast (1946).

Castiglione and pianist Morton Estrinfrom the Hofstra Music Department.

The exhibition “By the Hand of JeanCocteau: Works From the HofstraMuseum Collection and the Howard L.and Muriel Weingrow Collection ofAvant-Garde Art and Literature atHofstra University” opened in the DavidFilderman Gallery on the ninth floor ofthe Axinn Library. This exhibition continues until January 23, 2004.

Professor Emerita Dr. Jeanne Fuchsreturned to Hofstra for the conferencealong with her mentor, Dr. Alex Szogyi,Professor Emeritus of French Literaturefrom Hunter College and co-founder ofthe George Sand Society. ProfessorsFuchs and Szogyi performed a live version of a rare interview that tookplace between Jean Cocteau andWilliam Fifield in 1963, the year ofCocteau’s death.

The conference culminated with two35mm screenings. One of Les enfants terribles (1950) on Friday night, October3, at the French Institute AllianceFrançaise hosted by Madame JacquelineChambourd, artistic director of FIAF.(Thanks again to Mr. John Young of theFlorence Gould Foundation.)

The second 35mm screening was a Saturday morning matinee inHuntington at the Cinema Arts Centre.The film was Beauty and the Beast(1946). After the screening, our finalpanel convened. Beauty and the Beastwas a grand finale as we viewed a newlyrestored print on a big screen.

References

Ade, Andrew. “Le Son d’un Poête: TheTheater ‘Voice-Box’ in Cocteau’s Cinema.”Hofstra Cultural Center, Oct. 1-3, 2003.Westminster College.

O’Leary, Liam. The Silent Cinema. London,Studio Vista Ltd., and New York, Duttonand Co. Inc., 1965.

Wall-Romana, Christophe. “Le film surnaturel …: Virtual Filmic Experiencingin Cocteau’s Early Writing.” HofstraCultural Center, Oct. 1-3, 2003.University of California at Berkeley.

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Prior to joining Hofstra University’s New College as an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts/Creative Studies,David Pushkin was on the faculty at American and Columbia Universities. He is a fine artist whose workcan be found in such diverse private and public collections as those of the American University School ofLaw, and the West Virginia Parkways and Tourism Authority.

Solo exhibits of Professor Pushkin’s work include: Prayer Windows at Venturella Stained Glass Studios,Union Square, New York; New Abstract Works on Paper at the Frank Art Center of Shepherd College; andDrawings on Wood at the Vegetable Mineral Gallery in New York. He has participated in numerous groupshows, including those at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, the Dadian Gallery atWesley Theological Seminary, and the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, among others.

Professor Pushkin also brings his artistic sensibilities to his work as a curator. This fall, he co-directed theHofstra Cultural Center conference A Pen of Light: The Films of Jean Cocteau. He curated the following exhibits at the Joan and Donald E. AxinnLibrary: By the Hand of Jean Cocteau at the David Filderman Gallery, as well as In the Eye of the Camera: Jean Cocteau and Beauty and the Beastand In the Eye of the Camera: Jean Cocteau in the South of France, both at the Rochelle and Irwin A. Lowenfeld Conference and Exhibition Hall.

His curatorial work also includes Vue de pre/Close Up, a group showing of artists from Paris and New York held at the Cuchifritos Gallery in NewYork City in 2002; Free Produce at New York’s Charas/El Bohio Cultural Center Gallery in conjunction with the New York City Fringe Theater Festival;and Broken Pictures, featuring the art of Mark Flood and David West at the Rochelle and Irwin A. Lowenfeld Conference and Exhibition Hall atHofstra’s Axinn Library.

David Pushkin earned an M.F.A. in drawing/printing at Columbia University in 1990. He was awarded a B.F.A. in filmmaking/drawing from theSan Francisco Art Institute and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. A grant recipient of The Florence Gould Foundation and the NationalArts Club, among others, Professor Pushkin has contributed scholarly articles to diverse publications and conferences.

Actors Jean Marais, Marie Deo and Francois Perier, Orpheus, (1949). Photocredit: Photofest