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Simply Perfect

A different way of telling a story

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Blood of a Poet, The (1930) *** (out of 4) The first film in director Jean Cocteau's "Orphic" trilogy is clearly a very personal film, which means that the director knows what it's about while the viewer simply has to guess what it means. There's not any "plot" to speak of but instead we're treated to just over 50-minutes worth of images ranging from snow ball fights to a man shooting himself to countless other images, which are supposed to be taking part during the time it takes for a chimney to fall to the ground. There's no question that this film is full of surreal images and many people are going to watch this film and see nothing more than a lot of images thrown together without any rhyme or reason as to why they're being shown. I'm sure some people would like to unlock the mysteries behind the stories and will rack their brains trying to figure out what the director meant by each frame in the picture. I personally never put too much into a film like this where it's clear the director doesn't want to viewer to know what's going on. I'm sure Cocteau could explain each second of this film in full detail but as a viewer I really wasn't trying to figure out what was going on but instead just sit back and enjoy what I was seeing. I thought the first forty-minutes of this movie was extremely entertaining with many of the images really jumping out of me. My favorite sequence was the one where a man is ordered to put a gun to his temple and pull the trigger. What happens next is something I won't spoil in detail but the aftermath of the gunshot was quite creative. Another nice scene is when an artist goes "into" a mirror only to splash into some water instead. Many of these early images are shown in a wide range of ways and this really adds to the surreal nature of the picture. The final ten-minutes or so is where I started to get bored as the final act didn't strike me as being nearly as well-made or interesting. I wouldn't rank this film as a masterpiece and I wouldn't rank it up against the work of Luis Bunuel but on its own it's still a rather impressive little film but, again, I wouldn't try figuring it out.

Though my experience is undoubtedly limited, I'm not usually a fan of surrealism or experimental cinema, usually dismissing them as exercises in pointlessness. However, my duty as a film buff tempted me to try my hands at Jean Cocteau's "Orphic trilogy", starting with 'Le Sang d'un poète / The Blood of a Poet (1930) {the remaining two films are, of course, 'Orpheus (1950)' and 'The Testament of Orpheus (1960)'}. Luckily the film was rather short, because I can't say that – on first viewing, at least – I got much out of it. There is certainly some very interesting imagery, and Cocteau has fun making use of his visual trickery {I particularly liked how the poet fell through the mirror}, but, once the hour was over, I simply didn't feel any more entranced, inspired or shocked than I had been prior to watching the film. Call it inexperience if you must, but I just didn't "get" what the film was trying to communicate, if anything at all.As a random collection of bizarre and occasionally-invigorating images, 'The Blood of a Poet' works to a certain extent, but, if it ever aimed to shock its audiences, the effect is never anything to rival its surrealistic contemporaries, mostly notably Luis Buñuel's 'Un chien andalou / An Andalusian Dog (1929).' In Cocteau's keen eye for mind-tripping camera-work, there is certainly merit, though I doubt that the mere inventiveness of the visuals is the reason why the film is held in such reverence. Is the film simply a collection of random episodes designed to evoke an emotional response, or is there a deeper subtext that I'm overlooking? One interesting theory is that 'The Blood of a Poet' depicts the suffering of a poet, of an artist, and how this immense suffering is transformed into a work of art, something truly beautiful {one particular sequence supports this hypothesis, as a young girl responds to her cruel maltreatment by learning to fly}.However, beyond this primitive inkling of a theory, I find myself thoroughly baffled by the events depicted in the film, which largely strike me as being random. In an essay he wrote about his film {included with the excellent Criterion Collection DVD}, Cocteau states that 'The Blood of a Poet' draws nothing from dreams or symbols, but that it, "as far as the former are concerned… initiates their mechanism, and by letting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets memories entwine, move and express themselves freely. As for the latter, it rejects them, and substitutes acts, or allegories of these acts, that the spectator can make symbols of if he wishes." The precise meaning of these words still eludes me, but it sounds as though the director didn't ever intend for the film to make any sense, and that it is up to the audience to derive their own greater meaning from the collection of sounds and images. Maybe Cocteau knew exactly what he was doing, or maybe he just managed to convince us that he did.

In film, Jean Cocteau found the perfect medium to portray his own personal mythology… Though his involvement in cinema was uneven, spasmodic and largely undertaken during later life, his fantastic images, well-meaning amateurism and continuous self-preoccupation were inspirational to the avant-garde and underground… By 1930, when Cocteau made his first film, he was already an established poet, novelist, dramatist and artist… "Le Sang d'un poète" (The Blood of a Poet) was a characteristically romantic portrait of the artist structured as a surreal succession of images centered on a private mythology: desiring immortality, the poet, martyr to creativity, must first pass through a mirror into a deathly private dream-world… Financed, like "L'Age d'Or," by the Vicomte de Noailles, its indulgent celebration of artists in general (and, therefore, Cocteau in particular) makes it inferior to Buñuel's film, but its strong, bizarre symbolism is often alarming

I LOVED Orpheus and Beauty and the Beast--both Jean Cocteau masterpieces. However, this "movie" doesn't really appear to be a movie at all, but looks like a lot of little skits Cocteau created to amuse his friends--sort of like performance art, not cinema. There is absolutely no coherence whatsoever or theme. And this is NOT just because he adored surrealism. You can have surrealism in a movie provided it's not just bits and pieces of celluloid pasted together--which is what this is.Maybe this film would have best been shown at some gallery where they have "new wave" art. I could see people looking at jars of placentas, cow excrement statues, a yodeling woman standing in a bucket of Jello and this film being played all at the same time. That's the sort of reason I could see for making the movie.Many of the segments in the film were just camera tricks Cocteau was working on as an experiment. With MOST directors, the tricks and home movies they make do not make it to the cinema--but for some odd reason this did. They are sometimes COOL camera tricks, but that's all--I certainly would NOT want to pay to rent or to go see his little experiments. The only good from this mess I can see is that some of the tricks he used later appeared in much more polished form in Orpheus--such as running the film backwards or building rooms that were upside down or sideways. Cool tricks, but that's all. Watching this film is like staring at rough drawings that will be used for set designs or matte paintings--interesting but only a tiny piece of a whole movie.So, it's pretty much a waste of time to see this, though I guess it is interesting to see a few statues come to life, the man wipe the smile from the painting and it becomes ALIVE and stuck on his hand, AND you get to see a couple people blow their brains out--complete with copious amounts of blood! If this ain't performance art, I don't know what is!