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Connections, in both directions

Beauty and the Beast poster
Visually, the characterization makes a nod to the scowling-eyed Beast from Jean Cocteau’s immortal “Beauty and the Beast” (1946), but he also comes off as a kind of royal version of the Elephant Man: a melancholy freak trapped in solitude.
Owen Gleiberman • Variety • Mar 3, 2017
variety.com ↗
Largely devoid of imagination, this Beauty And The Beast will likely hit its mark with plenty of viewers—those old enough to get a buzz of recognition from “Be Our Guest” (busily reconceived as a vortex of ones and zeroes) and those too young to know they’re watching a faded copy of last millennium’s family entertainment.
Stevens is one of the best parts of this “Beauty and the Beast” — right up there with Luke Evans’ blustery, conceited Gaston, with Kevin Kline’s doddering father, and with Ewan McGregor’s spastic, ostentatiously French-accented candelabra-man Lumiere.
Holy Motors poster
And the longest section, with that nasty troglodyte, incorporates both one of Carax' earlier works (the same character showed up in his contribution to the 2008 anthology film "Tokyo!") and a bit of Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast."
NJ.com
nj.com ↗
“Holy Motors” looks forward and backward, combining science fiction with an upended, funhouse mirror history riffing on Cocteau, Bunuel, “Beauty and the Beast,” and Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and “M,” among many influences.
Emanuel Levy
archive.org ↗
The Phantom of the Opera poster
With its numerous candelabras held by gilded human arms (an idea stolen from director Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast"), stylish full-length mirrors and translucent drapes, however, they might as well be in the basement of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.
The staging is generally indifferent, save for a few scattered shots that prove Schumacher had seen Moulin Rouge! sometime in the three years since its release, and the utterly tacky lift at the start of the garish, over-lit "The Phantom of the Opera" sequence that proves he'd also seen Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast , and inaccurately assumed that he had earned the right to lick that film's taint, let alone pilfer one of its most famous images.
And for that matter, there are clearly intentional references to Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.
There are moments when the movie seems desperate to approach the lyric surrealism of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell's ''The Red Shoes" and Jean Cocteau's ''Beauty and the Beast," the foulness of Dario Argento's own Faustian ''Phantom" adaptation, or, at least, the insanity of Brian De Palma's ''The Phantom of the Paradise."
After sweeping down a corridor of arms holding candelabras (see Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast"), the Phantom leads the girl onto a gondola to bring her to his candlelit grotto.
Reeling Reviews • Jan 10, 2020
reelingreviews.com ↗
The Shape of Water poster
The best parts of “The Shape of Water,” a fantasy fairy tale set in 1962 in a top-secret aerospace research center, are marvelously rhapsodic in ways that recall films like Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” without ever seeming slavish.
Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor • The Christian Science Monitor • Dec 1, 2017
csmonitor.com ↗
Doug Jones: the secret creature, thought a god by the villagers from whose land he was torn, akin to the “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” but also the beauty and the beast from the myth, especially Jean Cocteau’s 1946 “Beauty and the Beast.”
Ray Pride • New City Film • Dec 4, 2017
newcityfilm.com ↗
Guillermo del Toro’s new horror-fantasy The Shape of Water gives striking, at times unsettling, and at other times deeply moving form to Williams’s argument, building from a long line of classic horror and fantasy films ranging from The Phantom of the Opera (1927), to King Kong (1933), to Beauty and the Beast (1946) about tortured romances between misunderstood monstrosities and the women who come to love them.
Q Network
qnetwork.com ↗
MirrorMask poster
At best, Helena's wiggy adventures recall such Jean Cocteau films as "Orpheus" and "Blood of a Poet."
The Christian Science Monitor • The Christian Science Monitor • Sep 30, 2005
csmonitor.com ↗
Ghost poster
Jerry Zucker's 1990 fantasy combines elements of Spielbergian wistfulness a la Always (a dead man yearns to tell his beloved how much he loves her) and what appear to be very dim memories of Cocteau's Orpheus (a hunk walks through walls).
Prince of Darkness poster
Researchers fall, evil keeps taking on new forms, and Carpenter has great fun setting up the scares in scenes that pay homage to Luis Buñuel’s “Un Chien Andalou,” Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, and other films that created a sense of the otherworldly on a limited budget.
Alphaville poster
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 conceptual masterpiece is a hardboiled, Pop Art, sci-fi gloss on Jean Cocteau ’s Orpheus and George Orwell ’s 1984, using bits and pieces of contemporary Paris to evoke a totalitarian future.
Tenet poster
That is what the hero of Cocteau’s “Orpheus” (1950) is told as he prepares to pass through a mirror into the underworld.
Anthony Lane • The New Yorker • Sep 2, 2020
newyorker.com ↗
Now You See Me poster
Whether it’s Jean Marais stepping through a mirror in Orpheus or George Lucas using miniatures to create a mile-long spaceship , practical effects, like a magician’s illusions, trick the eye into thinking it’s seeing something it isn’t.
Maleficent poster
For a children's movie, Maleficent makes one hell of a Vogue pictorial, eschewing the breakneck pacing expected of a PG Disney flick for the stern, art-house rhythms of Jean Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire poster
In this stunt ending, Sciamma seems to have forgotten her previous invocation of Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, when Marianne and Héloïse ponder an artist’s choice between love and memory.
Armond White, Haley Strack, Andrew Stuttaford, Wesley J. Smith • National Review • Dec 6, 2019
nationalreview.com ↗
Paterson poster
It’s as much of a fantasy as Jean Cocteau’s “ Orpheus ,” another great film about a poet that was at least partially set in the “real” contemporary world.
Upstream Color poster
Carruth portrays the couple's courtship in scenes so evocative they reach heights of cinematic lyricism rarely seen on film since Jean Cocteau's Orpheus (1950).
Tirdad Derakhshani, Inquirer Staff • The Philadelphia Inquirer • May 3, 2013
philly.com ↗
Midnight in Paris poster
Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” vs. Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast”?
Pan's Labyrinth poster
The Faun/Pan (Doug Jones, Hellboy) even speaks in much the same manner as the Beast (Jean Marais) in Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946).
Repulsion poster
Haunted by nightmares of rape and violation, she hallucinates arms coming out of the two walls of her hallway (a steal from Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast").

That's all the connections!