Dec 30, 2024

The Blood of a Poet (1932)

Saw The Blood of a Poet, a surrealist film directed by Jean Cocteau.  Being a surrealist film, it's kind of hard to describe the plot or to determine what counts as a spoiler, but the premise anyway is that an artist wipes off the mouth of a charcoal sketch only to find that the mouth has somehow transferred to the palm of his hand.  Later on I think he turns into a statue.

The film completely lost me.  It has the creative process and artistry on its mind, but I was too tired and confused to guess at the meanings.  There's many moments where the artist becomes the art or the art comes to malevolent life, and I feel these are straightforward metaphors about creation and about "finishing" a piece (at which point it gains its own sort of "life".)  As I say however, the film contains a lot of stuff and I for sure did not understand it all.  It was fairly brief however, so I didn't have to baffled for too long.

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