1932 ‘Le sang d'un poète’ Directed by Jean Cocteau
Told in four episodes, an unnamed artist is transported through a mirror into another dimension, where he travels through various bizarre scenarios. This film is the first part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).
Кръвта на поета, Sangue de Um Poeta, Das Blut eines Dichters, La sang d'un poeta, La sangre de un poeta, A költő vére, Il sangue di un poeta, Krew poety, O Sangue de Um Poeta, En poets blod, Кровь поэта
I am regularly more astounded by even the mildest special effect in Jean Cocteau's work than the most outsized CG spectacle today. This Surrealist vision of an artist's creation process, from narcissism (hilariously rendered as the artist making love to the mouth he painted that came to life) to mythical inspiration, is funny, bewildering and never less than visually overwhelming. A few mixed messages here and there, but it's too enrapturing to matter.
This is the first Cocteau film I've ever seen, and it is wonderful. So many strange moments, bizarre transitions, and wondrous angles culminate in darkness and a dreamlike trance.
''is it not crazy to wake up statues so suddenly from their secular sleep?''
The black angel with a limp.
Living Statues.
Mirrors.
Lips.
Suicide.
Hotel Rooms.
The dead body and the cheater.
Pure aesthetics.
Playful entertainment.
A half-sleeping odyssey through a field of imagery that's self-consciously devoid of deep meaning; the subconscious deliberately suppressed.
Structurally biographical, but stripped of all depth that would tie it exclusively to Cocteau, The Blood of a Poet is a shallow but universal treatise on the creative process.
Focusing exclusively on narrative and beauty, it manages to be more esoteric and truly surreal than anything produced by the major surrealists working within the movement.
And the film so clearly wants to be enjoyable to…
My first Cocteau, The Blood of a Poet shows the French author had a clear understanding of cinematic language since his first film. It's highly imaginative, beautifully shot surrealism. I was entranced for the most part, particularly at the 'looking through keyholes inside the mirror' thing, and now I'm pretty curious to check out the rest of his filmography.
The only factor that made me keep watching this film was my fascination of surrealism and the mystery surrealism and Cocteu's storytelling provides. In my eyes, The Blood of a Poet stands as a less style sure and tight film as e.g. L'Age d'Or. The watch itself was a bit of a drag, but the more I let it sink in, the more it becomes clear and exciting to me.
Decadence is the charge that dogged Jean Cocteau, that dabbler, that celebrity, artist of the ruling class, even in Vichy, the man who made The Blood Of A Poet at age 40 because a gay viscount in his social circle wanted to finance a film, or more accurately, finance the man behind it. In the end, the patron had twins, Buñuel’s L’âge d’or and Cocteau’s The Blood Of A Poet. But where Buñuel’s urgency was political, Cocteau’s was psychological. His surrealist stream of fantasy and memory is one of the earliest known features not just about homosexuality but made by someone on the inside, a portrait of the artist as a gay man.
It’s bookended by a smokestack collapsing in…
As always, Jean Cocteau never ceases to amaze me. His level of imagination into the visual aspects of this film is cinematic gold.
after this and l'age d'or I think I will stay away from french surrealists for a while
فيلم يجسد سرياليه التوجه الفكري المعروفه بكسمها فطيزها
في الحقيقه انا مفهمتش حاجه من الفيلم ومش مهتم حتي افكر هو عايز يقول ايه ولكن مهتم افكر بالتجربه البصريه الي الفيلم ده قدمهالي لانها مثيرة للاهتمام ومبهره وغير اعتياديه كمان لفيلم في الزمن الخاص بيه متاكد ان هي كانت ملهمه لافلام تانيه الشغل البصري كان صايع اوي الحقيقه وممتع خصوصا النص الاول من الفيلم كان فيه مشهد بيغرق فيه في مرايه مونتاجه صايع فشخ
بس في الاخر هو ده الي قدمهولي تجربه بصريه خلتني اقول احا هو عمل كدة ازاي غير كدة مووش فاهم حاجههه
ولكن انا ضحكت جامد لما عمل بلوجوب لنفسه
In Jean Cocteau's first film, we follow a story told in four sections, a surrealist journey that takes us from a painter who's being haunted by a hand he drew himself, to the death of a young teenage boy whose guardian angel is taking him to the afterlife while a card hustler takes his own life as a crowd of delighted spectators cheer from the balconies. Just like the poems that inspired it, the movie invites the viewer to explore its multiple themes and symbolisms, and there is some fascinating dreamlike images going on. It's easy to see how something like Eraserhead was influenced by it.
Hardly a fully, consciously graspable whole but definitely a collection of a lot of neat tricks and typical dreamlike Cocteau stuff.
I didn't get much out of it, but I was happy enough just spending 50 minutes with Cocteau's bizzare imagery. The hotel sequence/set is super cool, and the mouth in hand sequence is just good fun. I'm not sure if this is what I would see if I were awake for too long (which is what Cocteau descibed it as), but perhaps I've just never been awake for long enough.
it took too long to imply that he was going to try and masturbate with his new hand mouth
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