Mystery Of Picasso

Year: 1956

Grade: B+

Country: France

Director: Clouzot

Review

not at all what i expected, which was a straight-forward biopic of pablo picasso and his work. it turns out to be a more interesting film in some ways, and a less informative film in other ways. with the exception of a couple of scenes the film is just footage of the canvas as picasso is painting. clouzot (wages of fear and diabolique) positions a camera on the backside of sheets of paper as picasso paints and draws on them, so we see the work take shape as picasso fashions his art, but we don’t see picasso or even his tools. this approach is interesting on several levels. first, from a filmmaking point of view, it is different from most art biographies in that the artist is not the subject of the film, at least not directly…and is certainly not the main visual subject of the film. picasso’s work, as it unfolds, and thus his thinking, are what clouzot is most interested in here; so we get to know very little about the man (picasso), but have the potential to learn a lot about the way he thinks – as evidenced by how his paintings evolve. of course there’s a lot left to the viewer in this style of film – how much you glean from watching picasso paint is determinant on your ability to follow his thought process. another way in which this film is interesting is the potential impact the film has on the art itself. picasso, presumably, never draws/paints in front of a camera with clouzot telling him “i only have five minutes of film left, so hurry up.” also, the majority of his paintings are seen as finished products, in this film however, we see the paintings beneath the painting and this very well may have influenced the way picasso was painting for this film. in a sense his paintings become animation because he knows he is playing to a camera, to a crowd, that will capture all the strokes of his brush. we get to see the ideas that are discarded, and the changes that are made, in every work (about 20 total) he creates. in this way the film is a clear example of the observer changing the habits of the observed. despite the fact that we may not have gotten a pure look at how picasso thinks while he is creating something, we do get to see a genius at work – even if it is a particular and peculiar set of circumstances under which he is working. furthermore, since most of the 20 works were destroyed after the film was made (selfish genius on clouzot’s part?), the film is all the more important as a historical document.