SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

hoytjsmith This film is as visually pleasing as it is intellectually stimulating. Much as time-lapse photography reveals in seconds the weeks-long emergence, growth and blooming of a sprout into a flower, "The Mystery of Picasso" reveals the growth and evolution of several paintings. Each stage of each creation is a painting unto itself. To watch this film is quite literally to browse a metaphorical gallery of progressively different compositions. Quite often, the viewer may feel that Picasso has gone too far; that he should have rested his paint brush and walked away earlier than he did. Of course that comprises the intellectual weight of the film. When is an artist done? It is a question that writers, poets, painters, even film makers ponder. Imagine reading alternative, unpublished chapters of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; or imagine watching several varying, unedited director's cuts of a Luis Bunuel film. Henri-Georges Clouzot leaves his audience with an incredible appreciation for the dynamic, living, breathing process that goes into each Picasso canvas. Clouzot adds drama toward the end by informing Picasso that his film is running out. Is it really? The maestro doesn't seem to be rushed. Either that or he performs remarkably well under pressure.

Claudio Carvalho Henri-Georges Clouzot, the French director of the masterpieces "Les Diaboliques" and "Le Salaire de la Peur" convinced his friend Pablo Picasso to make this documentary, painting twenty paints in front of the cameras. Using some special technique, Clouzot filmed from the other side of the canvas or stop-motion, and the result is this movie, where two geniuses are gathered: one behind and the other in front of the camera. In accordance with the information on the DVD, the canvases have been destroyed in the end of the shootings. Further, in 1984, the French government declared this documentary a national treasure. Clouzot and Picasso deserved this beautiful homage. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Mistério de Picasso" ("The Mystery of Picasso")

stephen-357 One of the greatest filmmakers of France, Henri-Georges Clouzot, makes a film about his friend Pablo Picasso, perhaps the 20th Century's most renown artist. Clouzot begins with a proposition: if one were present at the conception of a great artistic masterpiece such as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, and could peek inside the mind of the artist, what would one see? Fortunately, the visual art of painting offers a filmmaker that insight, and so Clouzot begins with Picasso in a dark room with white light directed at an empty canvas. The artist, like a bullfighter, confronts and ultimately displaces the empty space with drama and suspense. Clouzot takes a minimalist approach which chooses to focus on the art rather than the artist, and he achieves this objective by having Picasso sit on one side of a translucent canvas, and the camera on the other capturing only the ink or paint that has been administered, without the distraction or impediment of the artist - pure creation. A window into the mind of the artist! Twenty artworks are created in this manner, each being overlayed with the often suspenseful sounds of Georges Auric's excellent score. With THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO, art becomes exhilarating as one attempts to anticipate what Picasso will do next. "How will he resolve this problem?" Clouzot has created a priceless document for anyone seriously interested in art.

t-collins-1 I've always known that Pablo Picasso was one of the most prolific characters of the 20th century. I've also heard about how this film was made many times before, that is with the translucent screen between the camera and Picasso. At the beginning I thought that it was a bit slow and I remember wondering if I was in the midst of 2 hours of Picasso drawing picture after picture. And indeed it was, with a few breaks where we actually see and hear Picasso interact with the camera men. But, amazingly, once you get into watching the short drawing exercises, it becomes very captivating. You aren't sure what he's drawing, and then a line and a squiggle later it is a bull or a woman or whatever. The most mesmerizing part though, as another writer said, was when he was painting the beach scene and he kept painting over his work over and over again. What he was painting over was amazing and it made you wonder why he felt like it just didn't work.