French poet and Surrealist Jean Cocteau teamed up with Henri Alekan to achieve his vision of a cinema of “poetry with precision.” Setting out to reimagine the familiar fairy tale of the beautiful country girl who, for the sake of her impoverished father, goes to live as a captive in the palace of a terrifying beast, Cocteau and Alekan replace the soft-focused photography conventionally associated with the genre with striking black-and-white images, creative set and makeup design, and uncanny special effects that concretize the unreal. Often compared to Vermeer’s paintings of daily life that partake of an otherworldy, magic existence, Beauty and the Beast harnesses the shimmering light of its cloudy setting in Tourraine and the expressive details of costume and decor in the service of symbolism.