Perhaps you were blessed to grow up with wonderful parents or perhaps not so lucky. Either way, Jean Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles (1948) is bound to make you view your own situation a bit more favorably, because the parents in this film really are pretty darn terrible. This film is about a family tearing at its own fabric. It reminds me, a bit, of the great play and film A Streetcar Named Desire, though the issues are less sexual and more the parent/child relationship. This is a farce, but not the guffaw-inducing type we ordinarily associate with the French. It’s more in the manner of cringe-invoking farce.

Historical Background: Jean Cocteau is generally considered one of the great early masters of French cinema. He is best known for four works incorporating magical elements: La Belle et la Bête (1946) and the three components of the so-called “Orphic trilogy” that virtually span Cocteau’s career – The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1949), and Testament of Orpheus (1959). Yet Cocteau, himself, considered Les Parents Terribles his greatest film. It was based on his own 1938 play by the same name. Instead of disguising the theatrical roots of the script, Cocteau accentuated them, even opening the film with a mock theater curtain. At the same time, however, Cocteau made full use of a variety of camera angles, close-ups, superlative mise en scene, and skillful framing of shots to give his play a distinctly cinematic quality for this movie version. Two years after making Les Parents Terribles, Cocteau teamed as writer with director Jean-Pierre Melville to film Cocteau’s mirror image play, Les Enfants Terribles.

The Story: The entire cast consists of just five characters. We meet three of them very quickly. Georges (Marcel André) and Yvonne-Sophie (Yvonne de Bray) are a middle-aged married couple who live with her unmarried sister, Aunt Léo (Gabrielle Dorziat). The selfish Yvonne is diabetic and never leaves her house. Georges is an inventor, of sorts. He was once engaged to Léo but broke it off and married her sister, Yvonne. Georges and Yvonne bicker and quarrel, fuss and fidget, though he cares enough about her to scramble for help when he finds her nearly comatose from an insulin injection. Aunt Léo is perhaps the sanest of the three, though she disingenuously manipulates her sister’s emotions at times.

Much of the discussion and tension among the three centers around the son of Georges and Yvonne, Michel (Jean Marais). He is 22 years of age but his mother still treats him like a baby and is highly possessive of him. Michel has stayed out all night (without calling!), for the first time. Yvonne is distressed, and all the more so when Léo suggests that it probably means that he’s found a girl. Georges and Yvonne have very little relationship with one another, other than bickering. By contrast, Yvonne’s relationship with her son includes some rather abnormal emotional elements – almost romantic in nature. She encourages him to call her “Sophie” and insists that she is “his friend” as well as his mother. They do a lot of hugging and kissing for a mother and son. There is no evidence, however, of a genuinely incestuous aspect to the relationship.

Michel finally returns home at six in the morning. He is a naïve and immature fellow, for 22 years of age, and obviously very dependent on and intimidated by both parents. He confides first in his mother. He has indeed met a wonderful 25-year-old girl, named Madeleine (Josette Day). Although she is currently involved with an older man (a “sugar-daddy” in Michel’s words) who pays for her flat, she has promised to break in off immediately. Michel says that he and Madeleine are very much in love and that she even helps him out financially. Yvonne is very disapproving, obviously fearful of losing her son to “another woman.” Michel then goes to tell his father. The father is all the more traumatized by the news but for another reason. It seems that he is Madeleine’s “sugar-daddy.” He’s been having an affair on the side and Madeleine is his mistress. Georges had borrowed money from Léo, used it to pay the rent on Madeleine’s flat, and, ironically, some of that money has worked its way to Michel – to whom they give very little directly. Georges, of course, cannot tell Michel the true situation.

So there you have the set-up. Michel has fallen in love with a beautiful woman who just happens to also be his father’s mistress. Yvonne’s only interest in the business is to keep her son to herself. Georges’s only interest is to keep his mistress for himself and to break up his son’s relationship with her. Aunt Léo mainly wants to stir the pot. She talks Georges and Yvonne into meeting the girl at her apartment, ostensibly so that Georges can pressure her into leaving their son alone. Michel is expecting it to be his gal meeting his parents, with all due pleasantries. Several twists lie ahead.

Themes: The basic theme of this film is the one implied in its title: people who are self-centered to the point that they have little to give make terrible parents. Yvonne derives her own emotional support from her relationship with her son and cares nothing about his happiness or well-being. Her only interest in him is that he continue to be there for her own needs. Georges, on the other hand, simply doesn’t care about the son one way or another – until he becomes competition for the affections of his mistress.

Production Values: The script for Les Parents Terrible is very strong. Despite the characters being rather strange people, the dialog has the sound of authenticity. Each character’s strangeness becomes comprehensible in the context of the others. The characters seem fully believable, despite being highly mannered and melodramatic. The black-and-white images are a marvel to behold and the sets were designed to perfection. The script is very effectively complemented by a musical score written by composer Georges Auric.

Cocteau accurately described this film as a kind of testament to “the acting of an incomparable cast.” The intricate dialog is rapid paced and the cast exhibits a finely honed sense of timing along with physical expressiveness that supplements the dialog perfectly. It is one of those rare ensemble performances in which each cast member plays off the others exceptionally well. Jean Marais, who played Michel, worked repeatedly with Cocteau, including La Belle et la Bête (1946), in which he was “The Beast”, and Orpheus (1949). He was still working as recently as 1996, in Stealing Beauty. In 1948, when Les Parents Terribles was filmed, Marais was 35 and a bit old to be playing a 22 year old, but he pulled it off as well as could be expected. The lovely Josette Day had been “Beauty” in La Belle et la Bête for Cocteau. Yvonne de Bray was magnificently irritating as the mother. Gabrielle Dorziat, who was shrewd and conniving as Aunt Léo, previously appeared in Mayerling (1946), where she was Empress Elizabeth. Marcel André, as Georges, the father, was “The Merchant” in La Belle et la Bête.

Bottom-Line: Les Parents Terrible will not be to everyone’s taste. It is tense psychodrama involving peculiar and highly affected people. If you’ve seen and liked plays or films like Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, you’ll enjoy this film as well. It is witty, intelligent, and quick-paced and it speeds by. The version I purchased was 98 minutes long, but one reference source indicates that it comes in a variety of lengths depending on the product you purchase: 86 min., 98 min., or 105 min. It is in French with English subtitles.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older