Of the members of France's notorious Les Six, Georges Auric (along with Arthur Honegger) had the most notable film-scoring career. In addition to scoring several major films for French cinema, Auric wrote the scores to Audrey Hepburn's star-making Roman Holiday (1953), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), and The Innocents (1961). Jean Cocteau and Auric worked together on films from 1930, when the poet turned his hand to cinema; notable collaborations included Le Sang d'un poète (Blood of a Poet), Orphée, Le Testament d'Orphée, L'Aigle à Deux Têtes, and Les Parents Terribles.

Nazi occupation of France (1940-1944) put the French film industry on hold. But directly after the war Auric composed what is probably his best-known score, that to Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (The Beauty and the Beast). Cocteau had begun filming it in August of that year, using as his literary source the famous original fairy-tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711-1780). The production was troubled; the budget was miniscule, and Cocteau had health problems that made the assistance he received from Réné Clément in shooting and directing it invaluable. Cocteau also had an inflexible schedule and the film had to be finished in April 1946.

Auric scored the film for a full symphony orchestra and a wordless mixed chorus. Writing and orchestrating the score, which comprises 24 cues, consumed so much time that it was not possible to synchronize the score to the film, but merely to record it in free time along with the film. Paradoxically, this added to the remarkable, timeless fairy-tale atmosphere of the film, which slowly gained a reputation as an international cinematic masterpiece.

The score to La Belle et la bête was thought lost, but after the composer's death it was discovered in a mass of manuscripts he had stored in boxes. The conductor Adriano edited it and made the first good recording of it, released by Marco Polo Records in 1994. The unsynchronized nature of the original score should make it possible to substitute Adriano's (or someone else's) modern stereophonic recording for the original soundtrack.

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