Les Enfants Terrible (1950)

In this compelling tale of incestuous obsession, a teenage brother and sister, Paul and Elisabeth, create an intense, private world in their untidy shared single room. Within the room, they live, sleep, argue and play out their erotically charged games without heed to the real world going on around them. However, when outsiders intrude into their intensely private realm, the scene is set for tragedy.A hauntingly atmospheric adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1929 claustrophobic hothouse novel, for which he also wrote the screenplay and provided the voice-over, the film is dominated by a performance of fierce intensity by Nicole Stéphane as the scheming heroine Elisabeth.Les Enfants Terribles brought two very different film-makers together for the first time – the mercurial, multi-talented Jean Cocteau and the single-minded, self-sufficient Jean-Pierre Melville. Despite clashing with one another, what emerged is a unique film that is as true to Cocteau's vision as to Melville's.