Cocteau sticks very close to the traditional story of the young girl unwittingly betrothed by her father to a ravening beast who dwells in a remote castle, but adds a whole encyclopaedia of visual references, chiefly to the painters Vermeer and Gustav Doré, as well as Cocteau's own earlier work (notably his surrealist short The Blood of a Poet). This is unquestionably one of the most visually ravishing films ever made, with Henri Alékan's luminescent black-and-white photography a major factor in its success.

Josette Day makes a terrific Beauty - with all the qualities that her name suggests, but also a clear hint of underlying steel: this is no girly pushover. For my money, Jean Marais' performance as the Beast fractionally edges ahead of John Hurt's Elephant Man in the Best Performance Under Tons Of Make-up stakes - Marais is truly extraordinary, fully conveying both the terror that the Beast engenders and, crucially, its primal eroticism: we truly understand why Beauty falls for him, even if it leads to the film's only major problem (which the Disney version didn't solve either), which is that the prince who emerges at the end is a pathetic wimp compared with the magnificent Beast. Greta Garbo is reported to have said "Give me back my Beast" when she saw the film, and no wonder.

The film is an object lesson in the creative use of smoke and mirrors - in terms of technique, the special effects are primitive in the extreme, but the level of invention is so high that this barely matters. The magic here isn't in the flawless display of special effects technology but in the way that Cocteau conjures up something utterly extraordinary from the simplest ideas (the candelabra held by apparently disembodied human arms).

Despite the restoration demonstration included as an extra, this isn't the best picture I've seen from a Criterion release - there's still a noticeable amount of print damage, and the definition could be sharper. That said, it's still the best video version I've seen to date - and since the film was shot in 4:3, the fact that it isn't anamorphic is not a problem. The sound is somewhat rough and ready, though this is almost certainly the fault of the original source materials - it's mono, but you wouldn't realistically expect it to be anything else. The language is the original French, with optional English subtitles.

There's a good selection of extras: an intelligent, informative critical commentary by film historian Arthur Knight that analyses both the film and its production history (though it's a pity he can't pronounce French titles to save his life!); an English translation of the original fable by Mme Leprince de Beaumont, a printed essay by Cocteau biographer Francis Steegmuller, and a twenty-minute extract from Cinematic Eye, a 1970s American TV programme exploring classic films. This nicely complements the commentary with visual material, showing works by Vermeer and Doré that inspired Cocteau's visual style, as well as clips from other Cocteau films and numerous other films. Provided you allow for the fact that the quality of the clips is pretty dreadful, there's a lot of good stuff here.

Praise should also go to the menu design as well - with a flickering candle on the right-hand side, and stills for the film dissolving as smoke passes over them, with the menu in an approximation of Cocteau's own distinctive handwriting, it perfectly encapsulates the film's style and tone.

Michael Brooke