Jean Cocteau’s filmography could be considered relatively modest compared to some of his French brethren — but with an output among cinema’s most immense, no less influential. While I imagine most reading this have seen his canonical landmarks such as La Belle et la Bête and Orphée, there are still a select few that go overlooked due to lack of distribution.
Les parents terribles (The Storm Within) will, thankfully, no longer be one, for the Cohen Film Collection have given his 1948 melodrama a 70th-anniversary 2K restoration, and it will finally make a U.S. premiere this Friday at the Quad Cinema. Adapted by Cocteau from his own stage play and featuring the same cast of Gabrielle Dorziat, Jean Marais, Josette Day, Marcel André, and Yvonne de Bray, the film follows a man who, while still living with his parents and aunt, falls for his father’s mistress.
We’re pleased to premiere the new trailer, which shows off the dashing formal elegance in Cocteau’s darkly comedic gem, which was filmed entirely on a single set. See it below, along with the new poster by Tony Stella.
In one of the great unseen masterpieces of post-WWII French cinema, a sheltered 22-year-old man, living with his middle-aged parents and spinster aunt, falls for a young woman, who just so happens to be his father’s mistress. Adapting his own stage play, the legendary Jean Cocteau (The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast) films this incestuous melodrama on a single set, emphasizing the artifice and claustrophobia, and, in the process, delivers one of his most radical cinematic experiments.
The 70th-anniversary restoration of Les parents terribles (The Storm Within) opens at the Quad Cinema this Friday, May 25. Get tickets here.