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Jean Cocteau

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ( , ; ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost artists of the surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist movements and an influential figure in early 20th-century art. The ''National Observer'' suggested that, "of the artistic generation whose daring gave birth to Twentieth Century Art, Cocteau came closest to being a Renaissance man."

He is best known for his novels ''Le Grand Écart'' (1923), ''Le Livre blanc'' (1928), and ''Les Enfants Terribles'' (1929); the stage plays ''La Voix Humaine'' (1930), ''La Machine Infernale'' (1934), ''Les Parents terribles'' (1938), ''La Machine à écrire'' (1941), and ''L'Aigle à deux têtes'' (1946); and the films ''The Blood of a Poet'' (1930), ''Les Parents Terribles'' (1948), ''Beauty and the Beast'' (1946), ''Orpheus'' (1950), and ''Testament of Orpheus'' (1960), which alongside ''Blood of a Poet'' and ''Orpheus'' constitute the so-called Orphic Trilogy. He was described as "one of [the] avant-garde's most successful and influential filmmakers" by AllMovie. Cocteau, according to Annette Insdorf, "left behind a body of work unequalled for its variety of artistic expression."

Though his body of work encompassed many different mediums, Cocteau insisted on calling himself a poet, classifying the great variety of his works – poems, novels, plays, essays, drawings, films – as "poésie", "poésie de roman", "poésie de thêatre", "poésie critique", "poésie graphique" and "poésie cinématographique". Provided by Wikipedia