Le Mystere Picasso: Un Film de Henri-Georges Clouzot (1958) Restored version (2018)
Friday, 6 Jul 2018, 06:54
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Steve Bamlett, Friday, 6 Jul 2018, 07:00
Le Mystere Picasso: Un Film de Henri-Georges Clouzot (1958)
Restored version (2018) with subtitles in English Arrow Academy Films Ltd.
I bought this DVD in London, in the National Gallery I think,
on my visit this year but have only just got around to viewing it. Sometimes a
film is what it says it is – a ‘mystery displayed’. This film not only shows
different versions of creative process in action as it were but critically
interrogates them – mainly through (especially in the reading of the film by
Maya Picasso, his daughter (also on this disc)) the intervention of Picasso
himself. The film used a transparent paper on which Picasso (unseen during the
drawing) drew from behind the paper and thus drawing in verso. Each simple
picture grows, develops, transforms – going through different stages of
semi-completion until Picasso decides on a finished version. Sometimes as you
watch, you feel he is moving into error only to be surprised by what is
produced – not the same but somehow developed from what went before not only in
style and form but meaning.
Before the end Picasso emerges from behind the screen to say
that the process is superficial and the film changes into a different mode –
Cinemascope – and shows the growth of painted canvases as Picasso ‘does them at
home’ in his own words. The same process of development occurs – this time
using paint, collage, line and colour as each phase transforms another – icons develop
and mutate like the ones of the dying bull – cubist method is tried and displaced
and colour enters – sometimes guided by drawn lines and other times devouring
such defined forms in a major painterly decision. Now it’s a picture – says Picasso.
What a great learning experience this film is!
This version also contains Haesaerts 1949 Visit to Picasso,
which illuminates the relationship of iconography, meaning and style by some
stunning filming (but not as excitingly as Clouzot with Picasso was to do) and
a home movie by Man Ray of a holiday with the Picassos and Paul Eluard near
Antibes. No evidence of Man Ray’s mastery survives – although there are some
surreal versions of what it is like to be on holiday.
One feels as though this disc allows one access – repeatable
if you own a copy – to something that is indeed ‘mysterious’ but also deeply
educative – even to those like me who do not aspire to paint themselves but to
learn how to see again and how seeing, feeling, shape and meaning come together
and can by rearrangement be metamorphosed.
Le Mystere Picasso: Un Film de Henri-Georges Clouzot (1958) Restored version (2018)
Le Mystere Picasso: Un Film de Henri-Georges Clouzot (1958) Restored version (2018) with subtitles in English Arrow Academy Films Ltd.
I bought this DVD in London, in the National Gallery I think, on my visit this year but have only just got around to viewing it. Sometimes a film is what it says it is – a ‘mystery displayed’. This film not only shows different versions of creative process in action as it were but critically interrogates them – mainly through (especially in the reading of the film by Maya Picasso, his daughter (also on this disc)) the intervention of Picasso himself. The film used a transparent paper on which Picasso (unseen during the drawing) drew from behind the paper and thus drawing in verso. Each simple picture grows, develops, transforms – going through different stages of semi-completion until Picasso decides on a finished version. Sometimes as you watch, you feel he is moving into error only to be surprised by what is produced – not the same but somehow developed from what went before not only in style and form but meaning.
Before the end Picasso emerges from behind the screen to say that the process is superficial and the film changes into a different mode – Cinemascope – and shows the growth of painted canvases as Picasso ‘does them at home’ in his own words. The same process of development occurs – this time using paint, collage, line and colour as each phase transforms another – icons develop and mutate like the ones of the dying bull – cubist method is tried and displaced and colour enters – sometimes guided by drawn lines and other times devouring such defined forms in a major painterly decision. Now it’s a picture – says Picasso.
What a great learning experience this film is!
This version also contains Haesaerts 1949 Visit to Picasso, which illuminates the relationship of iconography, meaning and style by some stunning filming (but not as excitingly as Clouzot with Picasso was to do) and a home movie by Man Ray of a holiday with the Picassos and Paul Eluard near Antibes. No evidence of Man Ray’s mastery survives – although there are some surreal versions of what it is like to be on holiday.
One feels as though this disc allows one access – repeatable if you own a copy – to something that is indeed ‘mysterious’ but also deeply educative – even to those like me who do not aspire to paint themselves but to learn how to see again and how seeing, feeling, shape and meaning come together and can by rearrangement be metamorphosed.