Le sang d’un poète [The Blood of a Poet] ***** (1932, Enrique Rivero, Lee Miller, Pauline Carton, Jean Desbordes) – Classic Movie Review 2986

Poet-film director Jean Cocteau’s standard-setting first film from 1932 is a dazzling series of enigmatic surrealist images conjured up as much to delight as to bewilder.

As statues come alive and an executed revolutionary revives, it is an avant-garde treasure trove of surrealist fantasy and autobiography (opium is smoked, a child dies in a snowball fight) all taking place as if in a dream while a huge phallic chimney collapses.

It is a surreal masterpiece and a highly influential cinema milestone, though yet even greater things were to come from Cocteau, most notably Orphée and La Belle et La Bète.

In the cast are Enrique Rivero as the Poet, [Elizabeth] Lee Miller, Pauline Carton, Féral Benga, Jean Desbordes, Barbette, Odette Talazac, Lucien Jager and Fernand Dichamps.

Cocteau’s notable collaborators here are cinematographer Georges Périnal, producer Vicomte de Noailles, musician Georges Auric and set designer Jean Gabriel d’Aubonne. The Vicomte de Noailles, a friend of the director, also financed Luis Buñuel’s L’Age d’Or (1930). The Blood of a Poet was filmed between April and September 1930 but its premiere in Paris was delayed until 20 January 1932 because of the scandal L’Age d’Or caused.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2986

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