TY  - BOOK
AU  - Jean-Pierre Melville
AU  - Jean-Pierre Melville
AU  - Jean Cocteau
AU  - Jean Cocteau
AU  - Nicole Stéphane
AU  - Edouard Dermithe
AU  - Renée Cosima
TI  - Les Enfants Terribles
AV  - PN1997 .E543 1950
PY  - 1950///
CY  - France
PB  - Melville Productions
N1  - Special features include:
- Feature commentary by novelist and critic Gilbert Adair
- Interview with actress Nicole Stéphane
- Director, writer and cast biographies
N2  - From case cover:
In this compelling tale of incestuous obsession, teenage brother and sister Paul and Elisabeth live 'like two limbs of a single body' inside their untidy shared bedroom. Within the room, they live, sleep, argue and play out their erotically charged games without heed to the real world going on around them. However, when outsiders intrude into their intensely private realm, the scene is set for tragedy.

A relatively unknown filmmaker at the time, Melville had impressed Cocteau with his striking first feature, the Occupation drama Le Silence de la mer (1947), and here he brings a cool, lucid eye to Jean Cocteau's claustrophobic, hothouse novel. Les Enfants terribles is evidence of the tension between these two dramatically different filmmakers, yet together they have created a hauntingly atmospheric film.

Spawning several imitations and most recently an inspiration for Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003), Les Enfants terribles is dominated by a performance of fierce intensity by Nicole Stéphane as the scheming heorine Elisabeth, and music by Bach and Vivaldi forms the film's provocative, impassioned score
ER  -