Jean Cocteau's masterpiece is one of the highlights of this year's screenings by the University Film Club. It is one of the most magical of all films, making full creative use of a very poetic and often surrealist film language.

Cocteau renders his story in the mistiness of a dream. One never knows whether what one is seeing is "real" or a dream. Indeed, Cocteau builds his film around two alternate worlds: the ultra-realistic world of Belle's cottage (with its huge white sheets hung up for drying in the backyard) and Beast's castle, with its living statues with eyes that follow the occupants wherever they go.

Although he made many films, Cocteau (1889-1963) did not consider himself primarily a filmmaker but a poet; he also painted, sculpted, wrote novels and plays, and stirred the currents of the Paris art scene. His first film, the surrealistic Blood of a Poet, was made in 1930, the same year as Salvador Dalì and Luis Buñuel's notorious L'Age d'Or.

Poetry, surrealism and magic flood The Beauty and the Beast. Its devices penetrate the usual conventions of narrative, and appeal at a deeper psychic level. Cocteau wanted to make a poem, wanted to appeal through images rather than words, and although the story takes the form of the familiar fable, its surface seems to be masking deeper and more disturbing currents of dread and desire. The film will be screened at the University in LT1 on Saturday at 8 p.m.