Thursday, February 5, 2009
Cocteau's Blood of A Poet: A Treatment
I sure didn't seek out to watch Blood of A Poet tonight. But I was stuck. The Netflix selections were Blaise Pascal by Rossellini, Horton Hears A Hoo or a concert of Schubert Lieder. I had Cocteau's film here because it was part of the Orphic Trilogy set from Criterion that I had checked out from the library. After nearly eighty years this film is still very odd but somehow oddly compelling.
What follows is an impressionistic treatment mostly written as a live blog while the film played. It is not intended to be definitive, but it is intriguing how a certain
kind of syntax reflecting the world of dreams results.
The man in plaster and tie. Doors and locks and intertitles about poems and coats of arms and choice and spaces between notes. There is also a dedication to classic artists before a tower falls and we see the artist contracting a mouth to his hand like the scar next to the pentagram on his back. He draws. The wireframe above him rotates. The mouth on the drawing moves then moves to his hand and his visitor retreats in terror. The artist throws away his wig, soaks his hand to see the throbbing mouth. That is one powerful hand. The mouth as a wound. The artist must then feed and moves the mouth to a statue which then lives.
Do Walls Have Ears? A man and his living statue are the sole residents here. Can one go through mirrors? The statue urges him to take the plunge. He swims in the abyss. It is only when we have the courage to confront our reflections can we be something else on the other side.
Our hero looks into the keyhole. The shoes are left outside. What does he see? An execution at Sam Peckinpah speed. Each room and a peephole a sensation. In room 19 he sees shadows of an opium pipe. You can only climb the door so high, We see you looking in.
Room 21 is flying lessons. Slippers left outside this tim. A young girl in bondage and bells whipped by a severe matron against a fireplace. Her back scales the wall. And then she rides the ceiling scorning her tormeter. Next is the shooting gallery of optical illusions and a nude in recline. She is announced as an hemaphrodite. Her changes of head and lines of body are announced by tatto drums.
From the model recline and the word yes, we see the wireframe spin againts the wall and instructions tell the poet how to kill himself. He bleeds and throws the towel away. Again he clutches the wall and the wire frame descends but comes back into view.
Away he returns from the reflection of the mirror he went into. And once again he encounters the armless statue he brought to life only this time he destroys her. He breaks her down to her plaster essence.
The third episode is called the snowball fight and boys are seen doing just this cavorting over statue. We then see the bullies smoke. The snowball fight escalates further. the Statue is broken up in their battle. bloody wounded carried away and the fight goes on. Statue is reduced to a pile on a pedastal. One is victimized terribly with a scraf. Snowballs as dangerous as knives of Spain Cocteau says and the victim he is struck and falls. Killer snowball.
Fourth is "the profanation of the host" we are told. The body lies there in the snow blood pouring from his mouth. This is an evening of upmost elegance we are told. A table appears on top of the corpse and a couple is playing cards. Opera boxes one filled with aristocrats another with a bejeweled matron and her courtiers. One of them has an eyepatch. The game below between Miller and the man goes on. A caped courtier continues to watch the players.
An African comes down the stairs. He is an angel with transparent wings. He covers th corpse and those in the powder and preen. The angel turns into a negative image with a low bass chord. The ace is pulled from the man's hand. The angel then ascends the stairs.
Th game continues. Lee Miller stares and the fellow pulls a gun to shoot himself and then blood comes out of the temple of his star shaped wound and those in the boxes applaud.
THe woman again becomes a statue. This time with black gloves and then film magic allows her to capture the cape. The courtier with the three pointed hat watches a sphere traveling in air and the statue disapearring down a corridor. Only to open another door she is alabaster wonder with painted eyelids. But snow is still on the ground and a large cow cutaway with what looks like a map of the world arrives. A traveler with a lyre appears, then we see it is the statue again laying on the ground next to a globe and finaly, the tower falls again.
Whew. That is one heckuva fifty minutes.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:45 PM
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