The Blood of a Poet (1932) User Reviews

The Hotel of Dramatic Follies

[morrison-dylan-fan · 7/10 · 25 August 2012]

Heading home a few nights ago,I got a phone call from my dad telling me that he had picked up something special which he expected I would like taking a look at.Not having a clue what to expect,I was thrilled when I realised that he had picked up about 40 different "Euro-Art Films in Widescreen on Video! (I later found out that he had picked each movie up for 50p,thanks to the seller at a pawnbroker's shop being about to bin them all,due to them being "Videos")

Checking the running times of the films,I discovered that the first film by Jean Cocteau, (who,thanks to a Ridley Scott audio commentary,I found had directed a magical adaptation of Beauty and the Beast,which I had watched a number of times during my childhood) was the title with the shortest running time in the collection,that led to me deciding that my first "choice" from the collection of Euro-Art Films, (which still contained a receipt from HMV in 1994 for 17 pounds 49p!) would be Cocteau's first movie.

The plot:

Part 1:The Wounded Hand:

Being unhappy about a painting that he has been attempting to draw,a poet is startled when the mouth of the painting starts to move.Quickly rubbing out the painting,the poet finds out that his plan to destroy the painting has gone a bit awry,when he notices that the paintings mouth has transferred to one of his hands.Horrifed,but also fascinated by this weird incident,the poet experiments with the mouth,until he ends up transferring it from his hand to the face of a statue.

Part 2:Do The Walls Have Ears?:

Finding the now talking statue to have a hypnotic like quality,the poet follows it orders by stepping into a hotel placed in an alternative like universe named:The Hotel of Dramatic Follies.Being horrified over the scenes that he witnesses of peoples follies,the poet shoots himself to get free from the statue's control and ends up smashing the statue into a thousand pieces.

Part 3:The Snowball Fight:

Since having smashed the statue to bits,a new statue has been build in the former's place,celebrating the poet that destroyed the old statue.Playing snowballs near by the statue,a young boy is killed,when a snowball containing marble hits him.

Part 4:The Profanation of the Host:

After dying,the boy's body lays under a table where some card sharks are playing,as his guardian angel attempts to absorb the boys soul,and the mystical power of the once broken statue seems to be getting more powerful than ever before.

View on the film:

For what would turn out to be the last film that he would make for 13 years,mostly related to the studio having to hold back from bringing the movie out for 2 years,due to all of the controversy that came from their 1930 Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali collaboration film:L'age d'Or.Writer/director/narrator Jean Cocteau does a clever mix of using "the poet" struggles with his artwork, (which includes an eye-brow raising scene,of the poet laying in bed with the paintings talking mouth on his hand,that he decides to "experiment" with, by placing the hand somewhere on himself that is out of frame (my guess being a sore knee) as a foundation for the more surreal images,with Cocteau showing that no matter how much he tries,the poet is unable to be separated from his work,to the point where a statue inspired by him,takes the places of a statue that he himself created.

Along with the poet's struggle with art,Cocteau makes The Hotel of Dramatic Follies a terrific place to explore,filled with opium smokers and hermaphrodite's,whilst also turning the winter wonderland of The Snowball Fight into a wickedly dark nightmare tale.Creating a feeling that the movie is building towards a wildly surreal,dream/nightmare-like ending,Cocteau sadly stumbles during the last section of the film,by not featuring the presence of Enrique Riveros as the poet,which leads to the ending feeling unfocused and completely disjointed to what had taken place in the rest of the film.

"A realistic documentary of unreal events!"

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 8/10 · 11 December 2005]

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

Celluloid Surrealism

[Schlockmeister · 10 August 2001]

Excellent example of early surrealism on film. It is like going through a dream in which images come and go unbidden and with little apparent sense. This film is to be viewed in exactly that spirit. Switch off the need within you to make sense of it, to make it fit a linear state of mind and you will get the most out of it, and be a lot closer to what the director intended. Let the images wash over you, respond to them as images, not as tidy stories with beginnings, middles and endings that we are used to seeing in films. Like a dream it has it's haunting, almost familiar parts that we can know and recognize as well as the parts of our unconscious that we do not see as clearly but still we dream of them. Too bad surrealism in film never took off more than it did. Here we see a hint of the possibilities that still lie before us. Recommended highly.

A strange and baffling film for fans of surrealism mainly

[Red-Barracuda · 6/10 · 27 December 2012]

Surrealist cinema was at the height of its powers between the mid 1920's to the mid 1930's. For obvious reasons, the silent era had been particularly well suited to visually strong films. Like Luis Buñuel's L'âge d'or, The Blood of a Poet is one of the later films from this period. And both incorporate limited sound. In the case of this movie it is mainly music, with a little synchronised dialogue. It's a film that gives the impression of having an overall purpose and meaning but I have to admit, I really have no idea what it was. I found it baffling but interesting enough in a strange dream-like way. And at 50 minutes it hardly overstays its welcome. It's consistently well photographed and there are memorable sequences such as the hotel of strange rooms and the falling into a mirror moment. So, mainly, the film was of interest to me as an example of creative surrealism. But as to what it means? Ah, well, your own your own there I'm afraid

A Masterpiece of Half-Waking Beauty

[bkrauser-81-311064 · 9/10 · 29 February 2016]

The Surrealist movement, as an artistic revolution has been utterly dominated by the name Salvador Dali at least in popular culture. Those in the know may be able to list a few other artists such as Roberto Matta or Max Ernst; perhaps make a tentative connection between Surrealism and Cubism and by extension Pablo Picasso. Even fewer people realize Surrealism has left an indelible impact on film which still seeps into the unconscious of many a-movie. Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929) stands as one obvious example but while Bunuel's career is infamous within cinema circles, many people don't consider French director, writer, and all around renaissance man Jean Cocteau to be part of the movement.

The Blood of a Poet is the first part of Jean Cocteau's Orpheus Trilogy (1932-1960); a loosely connected telling and re-telling of the well-known Greek legend. In this installment, our poet (Rivero) stands in a studio, painting on a canvas with the intensity seen in the most obsessive of human beings. His creations start to come to life, first the paintings then the sculptures. As he discovers the dreamlike dimensions of the room and it's contents, the poet goes into a fugue state falling through mirrors and peering through keyholes. The film ends with the destruction of a factory-type tower or smokestack precipitated by the constant appearance of a muse like figure. By the end she's lying in darkness with a lyre and a globe symbolizing Erato the muse of lyric poetry or maybe Urania the muse of astronomy.

Jean Cocteau is arguably most known for his poetry though he's dabbled in theatre, novel writing and of course film. In the realm of cinema his crowning accomplishment is The Beauty and the Beast (1946) which showed remarkable economy in storytelling and in special-effects. The Blood of a Poet however is a 55 minute concentrated dose of Cocteau at his most creative. Few films today can catapult it's audience into the outer limits of cinematic artistry and with today's spreadsheet, bottom-line obsessed studios there is simply no room for experimentation. Yet in 1930, one man was seemingly given unlimited resources to play with the form and unlike Bunuel's aforementioned Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or (1930), Cocteau's oeuvre concentrates on the sublime not on the grotesque. Interesting to note that Cocteau had been dubbed by his contemporaries "The Frivolous Prince," for his bohemian lifestyle and romantic view of poetry. It certainly shows here.

Those who lived prior to the films release accused it of being anti- religious and delayed its release by two years. Modern skeptics complain that the film is incredibly pretentious and others still, express it is aggressively political in nature. They're not wrong; all the above can be true and false depending on your attitude and disposition. If you're one to take artist intent into consideration Cocteau wrote an essay on The Blood of a Poet contending that it is not a surreal film at all! But rather an attempt to "...avoid the deliberate manifestations of the unconscious in favor of a kind of half-sleep through which I wandered as though in a labyrinth." As with all surreal artwork, the film is ultimately an exercise in personal interpretation.

What remains certain is The Blood of a Poet packs more themes, more story, more experimentation and more beauty in it's scant screen- time than most TV-series' put into their entire run. The ingenuity and raw emotional power embedded in this film is stunning and are sure to bedevil you in your daydreams and in your sleep. I truly, in my heart of hearts believe The Blood of a Poet to be the ideal first film for those wishing to delve into Surrealism. Of course that's just my interpretation; I suppose that's the point.

A realistic documentary of unreal events

[ackstasis · 6/10 · 10 December 2007]

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.

Cocteau remains one of the forefathers of the art-film and of the 20th Century surrealism movement

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 24 August 2003]

Jean Cocteau's first film subject- Blood of a Poet (episodes 1-4), all takes place between a second's worth of measurement in time. A chimney falls to the ground in a scene of pure demolishment, and for the more mysterious glimpses in the film we see them happening in a second's flash as well (if you blink you'll miss it).

Before I saw Blood of a Poet, I figured it would be a debut Cocteau attempting a Bunuel type of filmic showcase of a different, though somewhat simple story with anarchic, subversively funny dream shots of a purely surreal nature. Then, there is the first shot, the opening image of the man, the introducer, like a ghost or a character in a Greek tragedy. The first episode is "Wounded Hand of the Scars of the Poet". Right from the music a viewer can realize Cocteau's picture is apart from Bunuel's achievement(s). The latter has a technique of classical music (Wagner over a scene of imposed seduction, for example) while Cocteau has the music as inviting, jubilant, even, however all the wigged man is doing is painting a face. It's almost like a cartoon, and for a fleeting instant, the face on the painting has lips that move. This is more than the usual surrealistic stoke of the brush- this is the first sign in motion picture history of an artist (i.e. painter) converting ideas into an episodic format. The purpose is the same- abstract thinking- but the format is of a different mind-set.

That's the first episode, that gets the viewer in, as another wigged man enters- sort of shocked- and exits like the wind. A wire face spins and the lips moving again like the painting he created just before. It could be the illusion of a lifetime, or a trick of the white light seeping out of the crevices in the lips in his hand, but the man, like us, can't ignore it until it is no more. That Cocteau has an intended poetic voice here in his brand of surrealism is a bonus of sorts to the intellectual type of audience member. And, it's not a downer to those who might not be interested in a filmmaker's ego- the artistry overcomes the ego, for the most-part anyway.

The second episode is titled "Do Walls Have Ears?", when the artist gets rid of the mouth, but now the man, the artist, is trapped in the room with the statue as the guardian. This is the first sign of the instantly narcissistic mood of Cocteau in the statue, a director in and of itself delivering enigmatic, haunting statement the mirror, again, shows with narcissism- the necessary narcissism, the kind to know one's self AND how he falls within himself like water. As the artist goes through the abyss, he winds up at the hotel (right in-between this Cocteau throws in a cut-away of a man disappearing after appearing for a number of seconds, creepy in its non-sense). Then, the artist views an execution through a key-hole in a door.

(Oh, did I mention that some of the dialog is quite possibly backwards- otherwise, what else could be the explanation of the point of it, except for random gibberish?)

Themes of suicide come up, then, soon enough after, the artist tires of this to the point of him leaving, climbing on the walls. At the end of this totally hypnotic two-parter, we see the reason, at the last for a clear instant, his emotion is now purely terror (by breaking the mirror, Cocteau tries to break through his own narcissistic tendencies).

The 3rd and 4th episodes are another kind of two-parter, and they center on a snowball fight and a card game, respectively. "The snowball fight" is entirely representative of the (true) brutal, near-primitiveness of the realities that go with childhood, leading up to a battered snowball victim at the side of an elegant man and woman dealing a game with each other. Suddenly, during this ("The Profanation of the Host" as it's appropriately titles) surrealism is at an astonishing height for its time. One shot, in particular, seemed to be an inspiration for a part of the Jupiter landing in 2001. A card is lifted from the boy, an assist in the game, and the man ends up losing, the boy (and the black man) revealing disgust in the elegance of the situation of the game.

That's when it hit me, the message of Blood of a Poet. Behind beauty, as well as behind one's own desires and vision, even if we can't entirely explain why it's beautiful or why we hold these desires for ourselves is the darkness that beckons (perhaps in the slightest of moments of our lives) in our deepest, most assuredly dream-like delusions of grandeur. From this, you could gather, Blood of a Poet seems like it may not be for everyone, certainly not for those who can't even remember one dream from their entire life (personally I thought it contained inklings of pretentious gobledy-gook). But its nature is something to look for, and if you only see the movie once, you might not be sorry. Grade: A

Surreal, but only for the fans

[che_cosmin · 7/10 · 8 May 2009]

Although I am a fan of surreal movies, and enjoyed many of the notorious classics of the same era, I do believe this one is really a gem only 'pour les connaisseurs'. Surrealism as a trend of the time appealed to many film producers, especially European ones. And at that time every aspect or manifestation of the surreal and abstract was highly appreciated and popular. But, after this "fashion' faded away, not much of it remained as popular and as highly appreciated.

I think this is the case with Blood of a Poet. I must confess, just as some of other viewers commenting below, that I did not really understand where this film was going or what was it trying to communicate. The plot (the suffering of an artist in the process of creations) seems to me too easy for such a revered director and movie. I can understand this is an artistic movie, but not more than a collection of artistic images. My honest opinion is that this film is overrated, due to it's popularity among surrealism fans in it's time. After the dadaist era has past, this was no longer a monumental, milestone movie, worthy of classic status. One can consider it pure artistic manifestation in accordance with the period trends.

Other than that, if all the images, allegories, fantasies and artistic endeavors appeal to the viewer, or if they can transmit a certain feeling, I think it will achieve it's purpose. Cocteau's only intention I believe was to be on the surrealistic market and to be recognized as a surreal creative artist in it's way. The result it's not bad at all, but not as good as to be considered a classic. Anyone who's not a fan, or familiar with surrealism, should first see other titles or they might be in for a confusing surprise.

A masterpiece of the avant-garde

[MOscarbradley · 9/10 · 21 April 2020]

A masterpiece of the avant-garde, Jean Cocteau's "The Blood of a Poet" demonstrates not just an extraordinary imagination at work but remarkable technical skill as well and you must remember that this was also Cocteau's first film. A young artist, (Enrique Rivera), brings a statue to life, on her instructions enters a mirror, (a sequence he was later to develop in "Orphee"), and finds himself in a strange hotel where nothing is real. Plot-wise, that's it but the imagery shows just what cinema was capable of even as early as 1932.

You could say it was also decidedly homoerotic. Cocteau's artist, his poet, is shirtless almost throughout and Cocteau puts great emphasis on his physicality at least until the midway point when the poet becomes a card player in full evening dress and the statue, his partner and film becomes a surreal satire on the bourgeoisie, (his object of desire is now a young, black angel). Of course, looking for any kind of meaning in a film like this is basically pointless; just give your soul over to it and hopefully you will find Cocteau's soul gazing back at you.

What can we make of this OR what can it make of us?

[Groverdox · 7/10 · 10 March 2018]

A theme throughout the short film is transformation. Works of art come alive, and then allow the artist to transform his hands, and then bring life to statues. Mirrors become portals, and through the portals, the laws of physics no longer seem to apply.

Snow turns, fatally, to marble when it is thrown by one student at another. Marble is, of course, the material that artists make statues out of.

The scene of the death of the student is also transformed when a crowd of theatre-goers look over it, transforming it into art, as though it was staged for their appreciation. A card game is played over the boy's body, where we have another death, this time of the losing player, and another transformation, as the female player turns into the statue we witnessed at the movie's beginning.

An obvious point to all this transformation is to make us regard the objects involved differently. I think it is quite hard to look at a statue the same way after we have seen it come to life on screen. The same goes, possibly, for mirrors. Both of these objects are fertile ground for surrealism as they are inherently strange. A strikingly lifelike statue already makes you question where art ends and real-life begins. The transformation of a statue into a living being is therefore not so bizarre; it's a universal fantasy played out on screen. The mirror is also ripe for surrealist implication as we have all doubted what it shows us. Entering a mirror and discovering a bizarre world on the other side is a demonstration of this experience.

There are also simplistic readings of some of the images on screen. When the artist acquires the mouth in his palm, the visual metaphor is obvious: as an artist, his hands do the communicating, therefore they have a mouth. Eyes, also, are often made prominent; there is at least one shot of a person wearing a mask which hides their whole face, except for the eyes. When the artist is looking through keyholes, one of the keyholes shows him an eye looking out at him. Again, the face of the person on the other side of the door is invisible, only the eye remains. Thus the eye is the most important part of the face, it's what we see with, and much of the film involves seeing, and people in positions where they can't do anything else - eg. the artist peering through keyholes, and the theatre-goers watching the card game.

This focus on eyes is one obvious point of comparison between "The Blood of a Poet" and "The Andalusian Dog". Everybody is familiar with the eye-slicing scene from that movie, which involves an extreme close-up of an eye, not unlike the eye the artist sees through the keyhole. Further, that movie features title cards with phrases like "once upon a time", "eight years later", "about three in the morning". These title cards seem satirical in that they add information that in another movie might be useful. Since the movie has no real story or timeline, however, the information seems mocking in that it doesn't help you to understand what is going on on-screen - in fact, it does the opposite. I felt the same way about the narration in "The Blood of a Poet", which I don't think really adds anything that might help you understand the movie, except perhaps for hinting that you are not necessarily supposed to understand it.

However, one interesting difference between "The Andalusian Dog" and Cocteau's movie is that the eye-slicing scene in the former is, even after all these years, distressingly realistic; "Blood of a Poet" has a shockingly violent scene of its own, but the shocking aspect is not its realism, but its lack thereof. I am thinking of the scene where a voice from off-screen tells the artist to shoot himself, and he complies. There is a lot of blood, which I imagine would have been controversial in 1930. However, the artist does not seem hurt.

Famously, Bunuel brought stones with him to the first screening of "Andalusian Dog", expecting a reaction so hostile that he would need ammunition to retaliate against the audience. I would be surprised if Cocteau expected a similar reaction. His movie is bizarre, also, but I feel it has more of a message than Bunuel and Dali, and less of a direct attempt to upset the audience.

Dream Like Expressionism meets Poetic Surrealism!

[NateManD · 10/10 · 6 August 2005]

Jean Cocteau's "the Blood of a Poet" is a very strange film. Even by todays standards, but I can't imagine the response in 1930. The film was funded by the same producer of Bunuel/Dali's "L Age D Or"(1930). Cocteau considered the film expressionism even though it feels like surrealism. His goal was to film a poem. In the beginning of the film we witness a chimney collapse. Then we are introduced to an artist. He is doing a sketch and erases the mouth. The mouth appears on his hand and starts to talk. Then when his hand touches the statue, it comes to life. He enters the mirror and it takes him to a strange hotel, behind each door is something bizarre happening. One room a boy is trying to fly, another room there's a strange man with a spiral. Then the artist goes crazy and shoots himself. Then the film goes on to a dreamlike violent snowball fight and game of cards, and another suicide attempt. Very unique, highly surreal with slight homo-erotic overtones; "The Blood of a Poet" feels like waking up from a crazy dream!

A Pretentious, But Intriguing, 1930's Fantasy Movie

[dommercaldi · 6/10 · 23 April 2020]

Pros: 1. The score is bouncy and adds a lively and appropriately fantasy-esque feel to the movie. 2. The special and practical effects, especially considering the time period of the film, are incredibly impressive. 3. The costume and set design are great. They build the world up amazingly. 4. Enrique Rivero (Poet) gives a brilliant physical performance. 5. The cinematography looks surprisingly modern in its execution, and there are some really inventive and innovative shots.

Cons: 1. The plot makes very little sense and seemed to be of secondary concern to Jean Cocteau (Director). 2. The dialogue is ridiculously pretentious and obnoxious. 3. The movie, even though it's only 50 minutes long, starts to drag after the 30 minute mark. 4. There are no interesting or likable characters which makes it difficult to care about what's going on.

Far below Bunuel's work in a similar vein at the same time

[gridoon2024 · 5/10 · 26 March 2019]

I watched "Blood Of A Poet" right after Bunuel's (and Dali's) "Un Chien Andalou" and "L'Age D'Or"; it comes a distant third. It is totally inaccessible (whereas Bunuel's films are equally bizarre but I felt like I was connecting some dots - if perhaps not in the ways that he would have wanted me to!), and pompously self-important (whereas the others are generally playful). It is also blatantly homoerotic - fixated on two strapping, muscular, bare-chested men, one white, one black (not saying that's a good or a bad thing, but it's definitely there). Some impressive photographic tricks cannot sustain even 50 minutes. I didn't understand this film, it didn't make me feel anything, and it didn't entertain me; I gave it a second try, and I liked it even less! But hey, art is subjective, maybe others will get something out of it that I missed (twice). ** out of 4.

Yes, Very Surreal.

[Craig-32 · 22 June 2000]

Cocteau's first feature certainly reflects the early idealism of cinema, that "we can do it!" spirit that made early artists truly believe in the potential of cinema as a medium to trump all other arts. Thematically similar to the more famous surrealist work "Un chien Andalou," "Le sang d'un poete" is a chroma-key free-for all, with talking hands, statues that come to life, and banal bourgeoise cardgames transpiring on children's corpses. It's hard to watch at times, made even harder by what I think is a terribly distracting score (to the point where I just turned the sound off and enjoyed the film as a silent with subtitles.) However, by the end one realises Cocteau's heartfelt audacity, and the true spirit of the early cinema artists who wanted to do things with film that nobody has the cojones to try today.

A seminal work in experimentalist cinema; why does it seem like we've fallen way behind?

Cocteau's First Film and it's a Doozy

[springfieldrental · 7/10 · 17 July 2022]

Reams can be pretty surreal and on the surface make absolutely no sense. When French filmmaker Jean Cocteau constructed his January 1930 "The Blood of a Poet," he wanted his first film "to avoid the deliberate manifestations of the unconscious in favor of a kind of half-sleep through which I wandered as though in a labyrinth." Cocteau added "I was concerned only with the lustre and detail of the images that emerged from this deep night of the human body. I adopted them forthwith as documentary scenes of another realm." The filmmaker has his Poet (Enrique Riveros) losing all sorts of personal identity.

Even though there exist elements of surrealism in his movie, like the moving mouth on the artist's hand, Cocteau denied he had any intentions of making one belonging to that genre. He claimed "The Blood of a Poet" defies any classification. Instead, he looked at his movie debut largely as an imaginative process of creating a film that "draws nothing from either dreams or symbols. It initiates their mechanism, and by letting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets memories entwine, move and express themselves freely." In short, "The Blood of a Poet" was a stream of consciousness presented in a visual form.

Cocteau was in his early 40s when he dipped his toes into the cinematic world. He had excelled in every other branch of the literary arts, beginning in poetry, then later composing plays and novels. His forte was of the avant-garde variety. When he attended a house party in 1929, Cocteau was asked by Charles, Vicomte de Noailles, to present a film treatment so music composer, George Auric, could write an accompanying score. Charles put down one million franks to fund the project.

One of the highlights of "The Blood of the Poet" was model Lee Miller's appearance as a classical statue. The former Vogue magazine cover girl modeling in New York City, Miller gravitated to Paris to become photographer's Man Ray assistant and lover. Cocteau was so taken by her beauty he created a scene where he coated her in butter to look like a statue in ancient times. This was Lee's only film appearance.

Cocteau also told Vicomte and his wife they could be extras in his film. The pair were filmed as members of a theatre party pretending to be watching a game of cards taking place on stage. While filming, Cocteau had them applaud. Trouble was, when the couple saw the final edit, the card game ended up in a suicide. They were appalled so much by the sequence they held up the release until Cocteau reshot their scene with female impersonator Barbette as their replacement.

Cocteau had finished "The Blood of a Poet" in January 1930. Because many claimed they saw hidden anti-Christian symbols within the movie, Vicomte was kicked out of the prestigious Jockey Club. The Catholic Church also was threatening to excommunicate the couple. They held up the movie for general release for two years before finally capitulating by releasing it in 1932. The film is part of what is considered Cocteau's "Orphic Trilogy." The second of Cocteau's movie in the trilogy is 1950's "Orpheus," and the third is 1960's "Testament of Orpheus."

Beyond interpretation

[wjfickling · 10/10 · 30 July 2001]

This is a truly unique masterpiece, whose influence can still be seen decades later. There will probably be a natural temptation to try to interpret, to ask "what does it mean?" Don't! That would break its magical spell and bring you back to the mundane world of the intellectual. It doesn't "mean" anything. It "means" everything. It "means" itself.

The Impurity of Images: On Cocteau and The Blood of a Poet

[santasilmallik · 7/10 · 29 July 2020]

I attempted to 'read' Cocteau's film by looking through the succession of images and trying to discern the adventures of the protagonist, but it gets increasingly difficult to come to any deductions given the contestations Cocteau had with the surrealists when this film was made. Blood of a Poet and Luis Bunuel's L'Age D'Or, both commissioned by Vicomte de Noailles, are often heralded as the pinnacle form of surrealist imagination in cinema. But interestingly, Cocteau has consistently denied any relation of his film to the surrealist movement. As he claims, the film draws nothing from dreams and symbols, rather it "initiates" the mechanism of dreams and "rejects" symbols by substituting them with allegories. It is true that many artists who associated themselves with the surrealist movement later left it due to political reasons, and Cocteau's disassociation might probably be on the same lines. But I am more interested in reading Cocteau's statement as a proposal for a new-fangled process of reading surrealist texts. Several readings have pinned the images to Cocteau's biographical details. The suicide of the protagonist, for example, is supposed to be a reference to Cocteau's father's suicide, the snowball game to Cocteau's childhood memory, or the pervading homoeroticism to his sexual inclinations. But in response Cocteau has always maintained, "People read it in many ways, but the only solid truth is the "valid opinions of the technicians" who agree that the images are lasting and fresh."

His interest, therefore, precisely rests on the images he conjured in a "half-sleep" state, allowing himself to wander in a labyrinth where conscious reflection exist in an interactive relationship with drives, memories, and trauma. As some critics have pointed out, the images are not derived from restful sleep but from exhausted slumber. The referentiality of the forms and objects are not fixated, it is in the process of making. Reminiscent of the half-finished statue, head half-constructed with wires, or the fragmented body of the hermaphrodite, the film's aesthetic principle harps on the incomplete stages of creativity that has failed to achieve its aesthetic culmination. This unformed, unfinished structure is manifested in the texture of the film. To perform a reading following surrealist tenets, it is necessary to consider the film as a spontaneous celluloid manifestation of images derived by "psychic automatism", as Breton would prefer. Uninhibited from the rules of reason, it is supposedly a "pure" vision of our functioning of thought. Cocteau's film does the opposite. He does not claim to have stripped his images from moral reasoning or conscious thought. He retains the tensions, the impurity of the images in a semi-wakeful state, to inculcate a new mode of reading surrealist texts. The ensuing tensions in Cocteau's images particularly emerge from the inconsistencies in the "pure" flow of uninhibited thought. The resulting gaps make our reading more difficult because it is not based on following referential channels of 'pure' signifiers but to harbour the impassive movement in comprehension. Thereby, the direct textual references to his biographical or symbolic existence cannot be completely disregarded, at the same time they also unexpectedly blend into elements that radically depart to purely meaningless forms.

Meaningful ambiguity of conscience

[Polaris_DiB · 8/10 · 6 February 2008]

Jean Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" is, on the surface, something of a free-association creation of connected vignettes that embrace surreality and art. Stylistically, it's an exploration into the two-dimensionality of screen space and how the camera tricks the eye. Cocteau uses line drawings, perpendicular angles, and makeup effects to constantly trick and bend the eye between perceptions of depth, gender, and narrative.

But oh, that's not all! "Blood of a Poet", while not a dream-logic by technical considerations, is a pastiche of commentaries on, of course, society. The bourgeois are criticized for their spectatorship of each other, sexual curiosity leads to the promise of death, suicide dreams are simultaneously fulfilled and frustrated, and the public both enjoys and ignores the sadism of school-children: all in just 55 short minutes!

Apparently this was the first sound film in France, and like most first sound films, the sound doesn't sync quite the way modern audiences think it should. Luckily for it, the effect is somewhat more surreal from a modern standpoint because it goes against expectations. That said, the use of sound is very cogent and experimental as well, as Cocteau includes a very flamboyant voice-over narration and ambiguous uses of noise and music to effectively change the result of the images.

Finally, Cocteau is not above admitting the personal nature of the film by literally including inter-titles that explain how he cannot avoid getting trapped into the film himself. That, mixed with the film's embrace of dualities such as "this is a real documentary of unreal things" shows why this film isn't necessarily created to be understood, it's created to be experienced.

--PolarisDiB

NOT surrealism!

[akells · 10/10 · 10 February 2007]

This film is brilliant, but I do wish people would stop calling it a surrealist masterpiece! Cocteau was NOT a part of the surrealist movement - in fact the surrealists, especially Andre Breton, the founder of surrealism - hated him. I think it was Breton who said that Blood of a Poet was 'a bad copy of a surrealist film' (or words to that effect). And Cocteau never thought of himself as a surrealist.

Obviously, the word surrealism now is applied to anything strange, weird, wacky etc. But I think you do need to be accurate when discussing art that was made at a time when surrealism was a specific, and new, movement!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...

[Rindiana · 9/10 · 21 July 2009]

While Bunuel's bitingly critical and ironically distanced surrealism is masterful in its own right, Cocteau opts for a highly personal, self-reflexive, distinctly poetic way to entrance the viewer's subconscious.

To grasp concrete meaning while watching this beautiful fleeting cinematic poem would be as futile as hammering a nail into a drop of water. Surely, its main concern is the fragile and, to be honest, quite vain self-image of the artist in a material world with all its obstacles. But closer interpretations wouldn't befit an enigmatic pic as this.

9 out of 10 collapsing chimneys

A meaningless fantasmagoria of nonsense

[clanciai · 5/10 · 14 February 2020]

This is the first part in Jean Cocteau's "Orpheus" trilogy and a very immature sort of experimental film of only meaningless surrealism. There are a few interesting scenes, at least visually, but the whole thing is nonsense and a sort of childish whim of a film. There is no story, no message, no dialogue, no sense and no reason for it - it is just eccentric cinematic expressionism and exhibitionism for nothing, in total contrast to Cocteau's fantastically realistic films after the war.

Hmmmmmm....

[chris_weiman · 30 January 2002]

I think this movie is about transgenderism. It seems to me that not only the plot but the various symbols and episodes support this. The main character, a man, moves through the various aspects of his subconscious until he gives complete life to his female self. I'm interested to know if any other transsexuals have seen this film, or if anyone else has noticed the strong elements of gender dysphoria it. I think that Cocteau was making a film about transcending gender before that process was clearly understood.

A truly unique masterpiece.

[raypaquin · 10/10 · 18 April 2004]

This is a truly unique masterpiece. It is almost impossible to interpret and apparently impossible to connect to any sort of reality *unless* you are one of the very few who know the *true* story of the *very* early Christian Church. Those who have read the Pistis Sophia and some of the manuscripts that have been discovered at Nag Hamadi in upper Nile in Egypt, will know what I mean. The Nag Hamadi codices were discovered in 1945 and yet this film was made in 1930. One wonders whence Jean Cocteau got his ideas. The Vicomte de Noailles, who produced and financed this film, was a pretender to the mysterious Sangraal (Sang Royal) dynasty in France, dating from the Merovingian kings. A persistent rumour connects this royal line to Mary Magdalene, who is said to have founded a church near Marseille in France after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Weird and wonderful (for select audiences)

[I_Ailurophile · 8/10 · 24 May 2023]

I'll be frank: whatever bigger meaning or ideas Jean Cocteau may have intended with this are beyond me. I see a cinematic experiment in surrealism, and nothing more. Thankfully that's all it needs to be, and this cornucopia of half-mad whimsy is quite well done and entertaining exactly as it is. If someone else Sees and Understands what 'Le sang d'un poète' is supposed to be, then good, I'm glad for them. I find no especial substance in it, but it's a weird, wonderful journey even just on that surface level.

Everything about this is splendidly sharp, demonstrating more skill and care in the 1930s than some modern pictures can claim. Take your pick: Georges Auric's flavorful, varied music; Georges Périnal's crisp cinematography; fabulous sets and props; imaginative costume design, hair, and makeup; artful shot composition; sharp editing and basic effects; acting and direction that seem very meticulously guided to a particular end. As the visuals present us with one odd vision after another, and the soundtrack follows a little behind, the underlying craftsmanship is terrific all the while.

I trust there is actually a rhyme and/or reason to this, and I just can't see it despite early voiceovers and blocks of text. Even if there weren't, however, whatever dreamscapes Cocteau waltzed through to concoct such wild imagery is a fine credit to him as a filmmaker. The scene writing is a total trip, and to whatever extent there's a loose through-line, maintaining focus here (such as it is) is kind of impressive - there's a sense of cohesiveness to a feature where it isn't even wholly necessary. With all this said, anyone who isn't at all receptive to such far-flung, strange movies are advised to just not bother with this at all; 'Le sang d'un poète' is definitely built for a niche audience. Yet for anyone of a mind in any measure for the experimental, the arthouse, the outrageous and abstruse, this may well be an essential classic, practically a forebear of like fare to come. Don't necessarily go out of your way for it, and be well aware of what you're getting into, but this is worth checking out if you have the chance.