The Mystery of Picasso

In Henri-George Clouzot's classic 1956 pseudo-documentary, the filmmaker captures Pablo Picasso as he create 20 works, seemingly showing every brushstroke and dash of color, thanks to a truly original technique which let Clouzot (and cinematographer Claude Renoir) observe the artist's progress from behind the canvas. In the best of Picasso's efforts here (all painted originally for the film) it's possible to watch the evolutionary nature of the artist's work, as a squiggle becomes a flower, which becomes a fish, which becomes a rooster, which becomes a face that resembles a devil. Many of the works are simple black and white sketches at first, and the introduction of color to the drawings is striking, as is the film's shift to widescreen when Picasso's compositions expand. And while Georges Auric's score is frequently intrusive--in that it reads emotional responses onto the paintings themselves--it also helps turn The Mystery of Picasso into something of a Cubist Fantasia. While the film's absence of biographical details and analysis might seem baffling to some, the DVD offers excellent context for what the viewer is seeing thanks to the addition of two illuminating commentary tracks by art historians Peggy Parsons and Archie Rand (as an added bonus, the disc also includes Alain Resnais' short film Guernica). Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (D. Fienberg)