Addition of Avenant

One thing that stood out to me the most in Cocteau’s “La Belle et La Bête” is the character of Avenant is added. He is not in De Beaumont’s version of “Beauty and the Beast.” In De Beaumont’s version, Beauty has two sisters and three brothers, and then in the film she has two sisters, one brother, and Avenant, her brother’s friend. Avenant is like Gaston in Disney’s film; he is the arrogant, handsome man who wants to marry Beauty.

It is interesting how when Beauty tells the Beast that Avenant had proposed to her the Beast gets upset and runs off. I thought he went to kill Avenant because he comes back to the castle covered in blood, but then we see Avenant playing chess a few moments later. The Beast acted as if he recognized the name, but that whole scene doesn’t seem to be important to the story as it progresses since Avenant and the Beast never interact.

Also, the brother and Avenant are lazy and act more like the two sisters in the film than the brothers do in the written tale. Beauty’s brother and Avenant play major roles in the decisions made to get Beauty to stay so that they can steal the Beast’s treasures. However, in the written version, the three brothers do not try to keep Beauty away from the Beast. Other than these changes I felt that the film stays fairly true to De Beaumont’s version. Of course, Magnificent, the Beast’s horse, was added, as well as the pavilion full of treasures and a few other changes.