The Blood of a Poet
Director: Jean Cocteau
Year Released: 1930
Rating: 3.0
An incredibly difficult (and slightly off-putting) stream-of-consciousness film that won Renaissance man Cocteau bucket-loads of acclaim in France - I read somewhere it played in the same theater thirty years! - that basically adheres to Jodorowsky's great quote (he's referring to his own El Topo), "If you're great, [the film] is great, if you're limited [the film] is limited." A lot of meaning is audience-derived, and there's enough symbols and artistic doodles to make Jung write another 500-page book, take more drugs and continue to berate the landlady. I found most of it creepy and unsettling - it's as if I were burrowing into Cocteau's own fragmented mind - and somewhat unapproachable - not even Cocteau himself is sure what it means (or at least that's what he said in a lecture transcribed by the diligent Criterion crew). It's so hypnotic images slide by without you noticing; it isn't until later that you realize they were there.
