The Beast

Saw The Beast (thanks, Basil!) It was a sort of erotic version of Beauty and The Beast. The plot concerns a dying but prestigious family which has fallen on hard times. Only a father, son, and doddering uncle remain, They hope to save the family/name by marring the son off to some sexy American woman who comes from a rich family. The film opens on a pair of horses breeding. The son of the family is presiding over this but is called away to get ready to meet his new fiancee. He's shaved and pomaded and told (in a sort of scolding tone) that his future wife is a good Christian woman. She, meanwhile, has been arriving with her spinsterish, chaperon aunt. They have gotten lost on the way to the manor house and have wound up at the stables, where the wife-to-be is eagerly snapping Polaroids of the horses in action. Her aunt puts her hand in front of the camera lens, saying "what will your husband think?" This pair of scenes forms the crux of this film. The man and woman are filthy human animals after all, but they are kept in line out of shyness of each other, their polite society a lie barely covering the rude nature within.

This film comes from the 70s, an era rich with films skewering polite bourgeois society. Society, this film argues, is an absurd and damaging lie. The Beast here is nature, Beauty is society, and the Beast more or less has his way with polite society who merely pretends not to be into it. This theme comes up again and again of the naughty lewdness barely sublimated under society's veneer.

So that's the philosophical underpinning of this film. The actual stuff happening on screen however, is fairly filthy. Don't watch this with anyone else in the room. Also, be prepared for the plot to come screeching to a halt for five uninterrupted minutes of a close-up of a lady masturbating. This is the sort of art film people snickeringly allude to when they talk about "art" films. The symbols here are rich and interesting, I just wish it weren't so frank about it. It's purpose (partly anyway,) was clearly to ruffle a few feathers and I'm chicken enough to be ruffled. Be prepared for rubber Beast dong however, if you do see this, but be prepared also for this image from a book by Voltaire.