The Mystery of Picasso
Coming on the heels of his masterful thrillers The Wages of Fear (1953) and Diabolique (1955), French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot’s documentary (1956) seemed an utter change of pace for the director, but nevertheless proves itself a compelling, exuberant film. The film is a master class in technique and a mostly wordless but enthralling portrait of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. It brings together some of the great talents of French cinema: cinematographer Claude Renoir (La Grande Illusion, The Spy Who Loved Me), composer George Auric (Roman Holiday, The Innocents), editor Henri Colpi (Hiroshima Mon Amour), and, of course, Clouzot himself. But despite its pedigree of cinematic greats, Picasso is the real star here.
Picasso was a septuagenarian when the film was made. In the first few moments, the smoke from the artist’s cigarette precedes him into the frame, as though the painter himself has just materialized in a billowing cloud. Immediately, he goes to work on a blank sheet of paper, quickly rendering not a Cubist composition but a Surrealist image of a hybrid human and bird form. The opening credits complement the dramatic strains of Auric’s music.
Thereafter, the audience is treated to many artworks in the making, for which Picasso is often a disembodied presence. In a simple but effective technique, Clouzot and Renoir shot Picasso’s compositions on a translucent material from behind, so you can see the imagery develop and hear each stroke as the sheets are filled in. Linear drawings slowly evolve into fuller compositions of shadow and light. Auric’s score matches them, growing and swelling from quiet solo instrumentation to full orchestral arrangements. These shots are interspersed occasionally with close-ups of the intensely focused artist in the act of creation or from a slight distance so that we can see his movements as he paints.
begins in lush and silvery black and white; Clouzot introduces color later on. In one composition, his linear depiction of artists in a studio working with a nude model, develops shades of blue, red, green, and ochre. From then on, each painting unfolds in a similar fashion, starting as a simple black line on a white surface and ending in blossoming color. The music takes its cue from the painter’s subjects, setting Picasso’s image of a torero fighting a bull, for example, to music redolent of a Spanish paso doble. Picasso works in a range of styles, from sweeping, curvilinear figuration to more angular and geometric Cubist ones, and he does it seemingly with little effort.
The film’s title is apt. Picasso here is a mystery because the film is not biographic in nature. It can’t be said to really be about him, either, except insofar as he is inseparable from his creations. It is about the art and, more specifically, the making of it. Despite its uncomplicated format, lack of dialogue, and the repetitive nature of watching an artist work out one composition after another, it’s never boring. Clouzot wisely saves Picasso’s most accomplished paintings for late in the film, which conveys a sense of evolution. A shirtless, smiling Picasso signing his name larger than life somehow seems the perfect summation, as if to say, “There’s no need for explanations. This is who I am.” — Michael Abatemarco