Upon the film's December 1947 New York City release, critic Bosley Crowther called the film a "priceless fabric of subtle images ... a fabric of gorgeous visual metaphors, of undulating movements and rhythmic pace, of hypnotic sounds and music, of casually congealing ideas."  Cocteau's fairy tale set standards in fantasy which few other film makers have reached.  The sequences set in the enchanted castle - complete with living statuary and dignified by a Beast at once ferocious, erotic and genuinely tragic - are pure magic.