Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

morrison-dylan-fan 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.

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!

Nazi_Fighter_David 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

chris_weiman 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.