The Mystery of Picasso
Le mystère Picasso
Synopsis
Clouzot and Picasso joined forces to make a new kind of art film, one that would capture the mystery of the creativity process. Using special inks that bled through a semi-transparent surface, the artist created a series of paintings that unfold chronologically, dancing into being before our eyes.
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In the noir thrillers for which he is best known—Le Corbeau, Les Diaboliques, Wages of Fear—Clouzot dazzlingly revealed humanity at its worst. Here, cinema’s great misanthrope shows Man at his best: playful, inventive, unselfconscious, indefatigable.
Imogen Sara Smith
March 14, 2019
Clouzot, in his way, de-sentimentalizes art-making, showing the exaltation and the terror of a way of life that requires knowing how and when to throw something away. The Mystery of Picasso reveals art to be a life of many deaths.
Chuck Bowen
February 27, 2019
It’s legitimately not necessary for the viewer to buy into any concomitant hagiographic genius mythology (although you gotta sell tickets to a movie like this somehow) . . . but any artist of any medium, amateur or professional, will find it hard to miss the message: looking at paintings in a museum is like watching the footprints on a theater stage after all the actors have gone home.
Michael Castelle
September 24, 2010
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