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 Mystery of Picasso, The (1956)
Director:
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Stars:
Pablo Picasso
Release Company:
Milestone Films
MPAA Rating: NR
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Guernica, c.1937
Pablo Picasso
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One would die to know what was on Rimbaud's mind when he wrote 'The Drunken Boat' or of Mozart's when he composed his symphony 'Jupiter.' We'd love to know the secret guiding the creator through his perilous adventures.
So director Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique) muses at the onset of his unique documentary about Pablo Picasso that seeks to get inside the 73-year old artist's mind by recording his ink marks and brush strokes step by step in an unprecedented process. Couzot's friendship with the innovative painter allows us to peer over the old man's shirtless torso to watch him create 20 drawings and paintings made expressly for the film (and destroyed upon completion). Confidently Picasso throws himself into the task without a preconceived plan, seeking "the unexpectedness of naked truth." As pretentious as this sounds, The Mystery of Picasso works remarkably well for a select audience—art lovers will find it interesting while art historians and students will find it mesmerizing and instructive.
Numerous films have attempted to depict the essence of the creative artist, but most fail miserably (outside the notable exception like Amadeus). Clouzot's premise rests on the idea that a much better chance of capturing a painter's creativity due to its visual nature—by following the artist's hand the camera can somehow record genius at work. To achieve this, the director uses a special translucent paper along with inks that bleed through instantaneously, allowing the camera to record from behind the canvas to show the individual strokes without the interference of the fleshy hand. A noble experiment to be sure—to see naked creativity at work.
It's not exactly capturing Picasso while creating a masterpiece like Guernica—more like observing him doodle and play around with the pens and paints on throwaway projects in the beginning, almost like watching a professional musician warm up before a concert. After the first silent pen and ink, Clouzot includes original music from veteran composer George Auric, who notably scored Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, to make the remaining paintings more palatable to general audiences. Thus, if bored by literally watching paint dry, perhaps the music will get spectators through the experiment—a 1955 music video, so to speak.
Getting inside the mind of a genius remains difficult, even with such a visual medium—outside of a few breaks, which prove to be significant transition portals, Picasso speaks not a word—tirelessly transforming the blank canvas into line drawings that evolve into something quite different from their original appearance. For lay people the most interesting observable aspect involves Picasso's continual editing process where even good looking images are erased or drawn over, sometimes for the better and sometimes into failed ideas.
That sense of risk remains a key overall concept for the documentary. Just when the pen and ink drawings are becoming tedious, apparently Picasso too was becoming bored by the task—he breaks up the monotony, declaring that he's unsatisfied with his last piece and that it's too superficial. He wants a more layered work to get deeper into his subject, and declares that he wants to work in oils from his studio.
Of course, this means that Clouzot must abandon his translucent screen and photograph the various stages with time-lapse photography. That's when the imagery becomes far more interesting! One of Picasso's trademark goat heads goes through remarkable shadings and color variations in a matter of a few minutes despite the fact that he took five hours to create the painting in real time.
Although much of the early session seems terribly contrived—evidenced by the fact that Picasso is forced to time one of his creations according to the amount of film left in the camera—Couzot's film does achieve an instructive film that art lovers and students will want to add to their collection. It may be impossible to put a camera inside a creative artist's head (outside the handful of cinematic auteurs that always amaze), but Couzot does record a portion of Picasso's thinking and character.
In fact, the newly released Milestone Films DVD serves as an art historian's dream! The film now works a hundred-fold better than it did when first released in the mid 1950's with the additional features available. Included is a poetic 13 minute short called Guernica that provides historic and sentimental information about the 1937 Nazi experimental bombing of the traditional Basque capital using Picasso's most well known painting prominently. Also very well researched and informative commentary tracks are provided by Peggy Parsons of the National Gallery of Art and by Archie Rand, painter and professor of visual arts at Columbia University.
The prolific artist has left a rich heritage of paintings that are displayed in major collections world wide, and a number of books have been penned about the controversial innovator. The Mystery of Picasso stands as a unique project in cinema, and provides another piece of the puzzle behind his creative genius.
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