Category: The Criterion Collection

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #67: Jean Cocteau’s The Blood of A Poet.

At first, this film seemed impen­e­tra­ble to me. It only clocks in at 50 min­utes, but the film is so filled with a need for inter­pre­ta­tion that “preg­nant” does­n’t even begin to describe it. Jean Cocteau explic­it­ly states that the film is an alle­go­ry [or sev­er­al of them] about the the mean­ing of art both time­less­ly and in the age of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion. I’ve very delib­er­ate­ly not read any­thing about this film [I will once I’ve fin­ished this review, you­betcha] but I sus­pect that Cocteau was wrestling with his own artis­tic thought-demons and upon com­ple­tion, he decid­ed to express them per­son­al­ly, and ulti­mate­ly fatal­is­ti­cal­ly in this film.

A few inter­ti­tles set the stage ear­ly on, as an artist is work­ing on a draw­ing of a stat­ue in his room. The mouth of the draw­ing comes to life and ends up get­ting attached to his hand and pos­sess­ing it. It demands air, makes out with him, fon­dles his body and prob­a­bly gives him a blowjob [a cut makes this part mere­ly implied, at least to me]. Even­tu­al­ly the artist/poet ends up going through the look­ing-glass and into his own [and since he stands for Cocteau, Cocteau’s] mind. His mind hap­pens to be a hotel hall­way and as he peeks through the key­holes he glimpses styl­ized and dis­turb­ing things.

The film is quite vio­lent, much of which is expressed with the char­ac­ter­is­tic Cocteau inven­tive­ness. He was cer­tain­ly a spe­cial effects genius. Since much of this vio­lence appears to be an inter­nal­ized man­i­fes­ta­tion of the artist’s mind, it should­n’t be sur­pris­ing that there is an equal amount of deviant sex­u­al behav­ior as well, a child dressed in bells is whipped, an opi­um den is viewed in sil­hou­ette, a her­maph­ro­dite gives a peep-show, not to men­tion the afore­men­tioned hand/blowjob.

The stat­ue’s con­trol of the artist/poet sug­gests that it rep­re­sents a Muse, but a rene­gade one who does­n’t play by the rules. She is out to teach a les­son; though art may pos­sess and pro­vide grandiose and won­der­ful and world-chang­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty to the artist, some­thing of extreme solem­ni­ty; to oth­ers it will like­ly be just friv­o­lous enter­tain­ment. And, ulti­mate­ly, the impor­tance of the art will not mat­ter, it will be destroyed, ignored, dis­in­te­grat­ed, or for­got­ten. Cocteau even indi­cates that immor­tal­i­ty is not to be desired… “the mor­tal tedi­um of immor­tal­i­ty.”

Effec­tu­al­ly, the film is an attempt to ren­der poet­ic words unto images, and to me it seems to be more doc­u­ment than fable, Cocteau offers no easy solu­tions. Espe­cial­ly since the artist/poet com­mits sui­cide twice dur­ing the film. Stars, wire­frames, pas­sages, voyeuris­tic glo­ry ever­last­ing, denial, lar­ce­ny and pow­er­less­ness all inter­twine to present a two-fold mean­ing [at least] for the Blood of a Poet. The blood is his art, and art demands a poet­’s blood.

• Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Jean Cocteau.
• Brief review at Net­co­muk [and much more Cocteau].
• Sens­es of Cin­e­ma review.
• MovieMar­tyr review.
• YouTube clip of a good trick shot.