Jean Cocteau

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Jean Maurice Eugéne Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889-11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Along with other Surrealists of his generation (Jean Anouilh and René Char, for example) Cocteau grappled with the “algebra” of verbal codes old and new, mise en scéne language and technologies of modernism to create a paradox: a classical avant-garde. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Pablo Picasso, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Édith Piaf, whom he cast on one of his one act plays entitled Le Bel Indifferent in 1940, and Raymond Radiguet.