Cocteau, Jean (1889-1963)

French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, and filmmaker, whose versatility, unconventionality, and enormous output brought him international acclaim. Despite his achievements in virtually all literary and artistic fields, Cocteau insisted that he was primarily a poet and that all his work was poetry. As a leading member of the surrealist movement, which emphasized the role of the unconscious in artistic creation (see Surrealism), he had great influence on the work of others. Cocteau was born at Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris. Overindulged by his mother (his father committed suicide in 1898), he was a poor student, and his lack of motivation overshadowed his intellect. He eventually dropped out of school. At the age of 16, Cocteau met actor Edouard de Max, who launched him as a poet. At de Max's invitation, a fashionable audience attended a reading of Cocteau's poems in April 1908. His first volume of verse, La lampe d'Aladin, appeared in 1909 and quickly established him as an important writer. In 1909 Cocteau met Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who had moved to Paris with the Ballets Russes. Inspired and encouraged by Diaghilev, Cocteau began creating ballet scenarios. Diaghilev later produced Cocteau's scenarios Parade (1917, music by French composer Erik Satie) and Le boeuf sur le toit (The Nothing-Doing Bar, 1920, music by French composer Darius Milhaud). During World War I (1914-1918) Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. During that period he met French writer Guillaume Apollinaire, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani,and many other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated or who influenced his work. In 1923 Cocteau became addicted to opium after the tragic death of his companion, Raymond Radiquet. He described his recovery in Opium: journal d'un désintoxication (1930; Opium: The Diary of an Addict, 1932). During his recuperation he produced some of his major works: the plays Orphée (1926; Orpheus, 1933) an adaptation of Cocteau's favorite Greek myth (see Orpheus), and La machine infernale (1934; The Infernal Machine, 1936); the novel Les enfants terribles (1929; Children of the Game, 1955); and his first motion picture, Le sang d'un poète (Blood of a Poet, 1930). Cocteau's films, most of which he both wrote and directed, were especially important in introducing surrealism into French cinema. Several of them-particularly La belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast, 1945), Orphée (1950), and Les enfants terribles (1950)-have come to be regarded as modern film classics.