Blood of a Poet (1930) - #67

Back when I was playing in a punk rock band in San Francisco, back in the early 1980's, I remember one night hearing that another band had lined up a gig at one of the sleazy little bars where musical outfits like us had been relegated in that particular scene. The name of the combo struck me as funny then and it still does now. They called themselves The Aart Paansies- I distinctly remember the extra "a" in their name though I have no idea who was in the group, what they sounded like or anything like that. The name alone said it all to me, communicating the idea of a bunch of smart, semi-talented misfits who decided to put together some kind of act based on their understanding of what was hip, weird and androgynously unsettling, all bundled up under a tag indicating an intention to beat their detractors to the punch.

That memory came back to me as I sat down to watch, once again, Jean Cocteau's early experimental work The Blood of the Poet, a 50-minute ramble through the highly aesthetized imagination of its director. Cocteau, if you aren't familiar with him, did a pretty good job transforming his life into a fair epitomization of the total artiste. Besides directing films, he apparently dabbled in just about every other art form at his disposal, developing a distinctive visual style in his drawings, paintings, sculptures and other media. I don't know off-hand if he was much of a musician, but if the medium involved words and images, he was there ready to give it a go. Beyond that though, he was thoroughly dedicated to making art his life, and vice versa, writing extensively and cryptically on the topic as is reasonably expected of all world class artists, don't ya know.

In my previous post on Under the Roofs of Paris, I made reference (by way of an actor featured in both) to an early classic of surrealist cinema (maybe even the pinnacle of that particular genre, though its director, Luis Bunuel would direct films for nearly 50 more years) - L'Age D'Or (The Golden Age.) Remarkably, Blood of the Poet is even more closely connected to L'Age D'Or, since they were both commissioned by the same person, your friend and mine, the Viscount of Noailles. Despite this shared provenance, Cocteau goes to some lengths in his 1946 essay on the film (written 16 years and a World War after he completed the project) to declare that Blood of the Poet is not a surrealist film - he declares that surrealism "did not exist" when he first thought of it. I will respect his firsthand knowledge of the circumstances, of course, but in contesting this assessment by others, he reminds me of trendy insiders I've known (or been) over the years who cling tenaciously to the minute distinctions that exist between the works of artists who toil within competing micro-genres. So let's humor our visionary and rather accomplished friend by not lumping BOTP in with the generic category of surrealism, even though viewers gazing upon the two films nearly 80 years later are bound to note numerous similarities of style - non-sequitors, fantastic images, confrontational and enigmatic humor and just flat out weirdness.

So what is this Blood of the Poet thing all about anyway? Wow, let's just say, this is one of those movies that really puts the ART in Art House! Unlike the Surrealists who sought to record their dreams on film as concrete manifestations of the unconscious, Cocteau here favors "a kind of half-sleep through which (he) wandered as though in a labyrinth." Big distinction, huh?

To the viewer still uninitiated in watching movies like this, efforts to discern a clear narrative thread are bound to reap a harvest of frustration. Cocteau has put together a string of images that, while expressing ideas capable of yielding meaning, don't offer much promise of easy or immediate gratification. My advice, if this review prompts you to follow through and actually watch the film, is to just open up your eyes and expectations to cheerfully accept whatever Cocteau decides to toss at you. If you are able to stay focused and attentive, you may pick up on a discernable sequence that connects the four episodes, but for the first viewing at least, it may require more work on your part than it's worth. Just let the pictures, sounds and surprises have their way with you and see how that feels.

Now on behalf of anyone who wants a clearer guide for what to expect, here's my road map of how the film progresses. I don't consider anything I write here to be a spoiler as that term is commonly regarded today, since Cocteau is hardly driving toward the revelation of a narrative surprise or the establishment of truths that have to be arrived at unsuspectingly to be properly understood and appreciated. But if you worry that your viewing pleasure may be diminished by having a notion of how the scenes lead from one to the other, skip over this next part!

Here's what you'll see:

1. A masked model in wrapped in swaddling draperies gesturing grandly welcoming you into the film's world.
2. A key turning itself in a door lock, followed by this epigram: "Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears, in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!" Cocteau goes on to tell us that this is a "realistic documentary of unrealistic events." So I guess that makes this documentary #3 in our survey (after Nanook and Haxan.)
3. Speaking of towers, we see a very tall smokestack chimney begin the process of collapsing in a heap of rubble.
4. We meet the poet, barechested and white-wigged, etching a face onto a blank canvas while a cannon battle (heard but unseen) rages outside his room. He has a nasty scar on his upper back and a five pointed star drawn on his skin.
5. A knock at the door breaks his concentration. He seems wary of who it might be. The mouth of the face he's just drawn is moving, talking to him! In his haste, he rubs the drawing with his hand. Now, the moving mouth has moved off of the canvas... and onto his palm!
6. Off with the wig. The poet decides to drown the mouth in a bowl of water. But he takes pity on it as it gasps for breath, spitting up dribbles of the water its ingested.
7. Fascinated, the poet can no longer work. The mouth in his palm absorbs his attention. Unable to shake it loose, he does the only reasonable thing - revives the mouth with fresh air, then makes love to the mouth (after making sure that no one besides the cameraman is looking.)
8. The morning after... Cocteau himself appears in the form of a bug-eyed plaster cast head, not quite sure what to make of that moving mouth in the palm.
9. Another statue, in the tradition of Venus de Milo (a beautiful, elegant woman sans arms) appears in the poet's room. The poet ingeniously transfers the mouth from his palm to the statue's face. He's elated! End of Episode 1!

10. The statue begins to move, talk and taunt the poet, who seems to be trapped in the room, with no means of escape other than to walk through a large mirror mounted to the wall.
11. He trusts and follows the statues instructions, falling through the looking glass - so astonishing!



12. Into the darkness he descends, landing finally in a hallway in the Hotel Folies-Dramatiques, or is it a street in Paris that houses a notorious prison? No matter, they are all the same.
13. Peeping through keyholes in each room, he witnesses an execution, in slow motion, both forward and reverse. He beholds the mysteries of China. He observes a young girl wearing jingle bells receive flying lessons taught by a sadistic, whip-wielding governess. In Room 23 (ah, the Number 23!!!) he catches a glimpse of the "desperate Hermaphrodite's meetings" (note that one man's and one woman's shoe sit outside the door.) The sign covering his/her loins spells it out: Danger de MORT!
14. Contradictory directions for managing the lighting are given, understood, ignored. A gun is produced. More directions follow - how to commit suicide! This time, the poet feels inclined to cooperate. A shot is fired, blood spills, the swaddling draperies return, but the poet remains conscious. He's had enough! He swears! Back out of this wretched hallway, and up through the mirror again. "Mirrors should reflect a bit more before sending images!" The statue is amused, but the poet is pissed! He lurches forth, ready to do damage. The statue has no chance against the big whompin hammer wielded by the poet. But wait - he's turning into a statue himself! End of Episode 2!

15. School boys enter the picture. Two teenage bullies pause to take a smoking break. A snowball fight erupts. The fight turns serious as one student is wounded and a statue is pounded to dust. Another student gets picked on, strangled, felled by a rather light, wimpy puff of a snowball. His antagonist licks his lips, savoring the boy's imminent demise.
16. Wounded boy bleeds profusely from the mouth, gasping (almost orgasmically?) as his life-force ebbs away. He dies! End of Episode 3!

17. In the plaza where the snowball fight took place, where the dead schoolboy's body still lays, a card table is set up over the boy's corpse. The poet and the statue (now in the form of a living woman) sit there playing cards, accompanied by the "Louis XV friend."
18. Aristocratic dignitaries take their seats in the balcony to watch the proceedings.
19. Statue informs poet that unless he has the Ace of Hearts, he's a lost man.
20. Poet cheats by removing the Ace of Hearts from the lapel of the dead boy's jacket.
21. Announcement of the arrival of the dead child's guardian angel - he happens to be a young black male dancer, whose dark skin and buffed physique glistens with a fresh application of oil. He lays a cloak over the corpse and absorbs the body into his own, growing "paler" in the process (here Cocteau uses a very clever but not entirely persuasive filming technique to illustrate the change.)
22. Just before he departs, the angel removes the unjustly obtained Ace of Hearts from the poet's hand.
23. The poet realizes that he truly is a lost man, while the statue stares at him, implacable and pretty.
24. His heart beating loudly, the poet remembers the instructions he received in the Hotel Folies-Dramatiques. The gun emerges again. This time, he shoots and collapses, leaving a fatal star wound on his temple. Thus flows the blood of the poet.
25. The dignitaries in the balcony applaud the suicide. One of them turns out to be a transvestite.
26. The woman returns to her statue form, with long black gloves replacing the arms that were lost, and leaves the plaza. A silver orb inscrutably arcs across the screen, first this way, then that.
27. The statue meets a globe in the form of an ox, which then shrinks down to the size of a narmal globe. She bears the Lyre of Orpheus and settles into repose. Special makeup effects render the statue into her proper two-dimensional form (since this is, after all, film, a projected image.)
"The mortal tedium of immortality." End of Episode 4!

28. The smokestack completes its fall. All that we've just seen transpired in the moments between detonation and collapse.

Fin!

What does it all mean? Oh please, don't ask me, that will only spoil it for you. Cocteau himself said this: "This film, which has only one style... presents many surfaces for its exegesis. Its exegeses were innumerable. If I were questioned about any one of them, I would have trouble in answering."

So what do you need me or any other critic for. I've just given you a nice road map. Watch it yourself and discover what you think!

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