I was going to write a whole post about how the film is different from the original story because of the fact that Cocteau has turned it into an opera, and how much of it sounds like Phillip Glass. However, after researching the movie, I see that I have accidentally watched a re-dubbed operatic version actually composed by Phillip Glass, so I'm going to talk about it anyway!
Since this is the only version I saw, I want to talk about what making this film an opera did to the story. Glass' use of repetition and building chord structures in all of his compositions creates an other worldly feel that allows the listener to get lost in the music. Pairing his style with a fairy tale has created an interesting result because along with the surrealist style that Cocteau employs, the film really creates a fairy tale world unlike anything on the page in Beaumont's version is able to do. Not only does the music create that fairy tale feel, but it also dramatizes the story intensely. Hearing the characters sing passionately to each other instead of simply speaking takes the emotions involved in the story to new heights. We feel for the characters as they sing with more passion and emotion. Similarly, since there is no diegetic sound in this version of the film, we take all of our cures from the music itself. As the music crescendos, we are swept away with the characters into whatever is happening. In a way, this operatic fairy tale does the best job out of any media we have been exposed to so far of truely immersing us into the world in which the story takes place, and making us truely care about the outcome of its characters.