Beauty and the Devil
1950 film by René Clair
La Beauté du diable (literally "the beauty of the devil"; originally released in the UK and US as Beauty and the Devil) is a 1950 Franco-Italian fantasy film drama directed by René Clair. A tragicomedy set in the early 19th century, it is about an ageing alchemist, Henri Faust, who is given the chance to be eternally young by the devil Mephistopheles. It is loosely adapted from the classic early 19th-century verse play Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Cast
Michel Simon as Mephistopheles / Old Professor Henri Faust
Gérard Philipe as Young Henri Faust / Young-looking Mephistopheles
Nicole Besnard as Marguerite, the gypsy girl
Raymond Cordy as Antoine, the servant
Simone Valère as La Princesse
Carlo Ninchi as Le Prince
Gaston Modot as Gypsy
Tullio Carminati as Diplomat
Paolo Stoppa as Official
Release and reception
In 2013, the Cohen Film Collection released the Beauty and the Devil on DVD and Blu-ray. Besides the film, which was reconstructed (although with distorted audio during the title sequence), the discs offer a 2010 documentary on the film itself. Ian Jane of the DVDTalk said in his closing comments regarding the Blu-ray release: "Beauty Of The Devil is slick, it's stylish and it's wonderfully shot meaning that not only is the creative way in which the story is told compelling and interesting but that it is as much a treat for the eyes as it is for the mind. The performances are good and Clair does some interesting things with his take on the story of Faust. This may be an atypical take on the classic tale, but it works incredibly well."
Awards
The film was nominated for Best Film at the 1951 BAFTA Awards and won two awards at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists with a Silver Ribbon Best Actor award going to Michel Simon and best Best Production Design to Aldo Tommasini and Léon Barsacq.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1950 film by René Clair. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1196120. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2013, 2010 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beauty and the Devil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.