Word: cocteau
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Literature abounds with testimonials by narcotics addicts-De Quincey, Coleridge, Baudelaire, Cocteau-to the beauties of the neverland to which their favorite dope has transported them. Most medical textbooks have copied each other's statements that the effect of narcotics is uniformly pleasant. But most people who try a couple of shots out of curiosity find the effects (including nausea and vomiting) so unpleasant that they stop right there. Only a few persist and become slaves to the drugs. Why the difference? Three researchers at Harvard Medical School suspected that to become an addict, an individual needs not only...
Marlene sounds mellower than ever before. She is still a bored, poised and cynical siren, but compassionate and full of ripe wisdom. "In your voice we hear the voice of the Lorelei." says Jean Cocteau in the album notes, ''but the Lorelei was a danger to be feared. You are not." In the album an enthusiastic British audience claps, cheers and laughs along with the performer, suggesting that beyond the bored and enigmatic smile of the screen Marlene. there is a skilled and warm variety artist who can pout, frown, tease, worry, smile and flirt in a constant...
...young woman named Madeleine, whom Michael wants to marry but who, it turns out, has also been loved by Michael's father, George. Now such a situation would, without doubt, wreak confusion in even the most rational of families. When you consider, then, that at least two of Cocteau's characters are not only irrational but neurotic, you may get some idea of the frantic tone of this movie...
Aside from this defect, Cocteau has clevery combined realistic passions and humorous dialogue. His characters, hysterical as they are, manage to remain credible and funny at the same time. Their humor derives principally from the ancient method of dramatic irony-as when Madelaine tells Michael, "I was as found of George as I shall be of your father," and only the audience knows that George is Michael's father; and partly also from a simple exaggeration of emotions, as in the opening scene, when Yvonne's possessiveness and then Michael's naivete combine in a virtual parody of the Oedipus...
Intimate Relations has unfortunately lost some of its dramatic power through over-zealous direction. By the time of the final suicide, for example, the audience's emotions are too exhausted to be affected much one way or the other. But on the whole Cocteau has written a strong, imaginative, and enjoyable movie-one that get closer than most to the real motivations of the people it portrays...