jadavix
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.
Red-Barracuda
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
akells
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!
NateManD
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!
