The Mystery of Picasso (1956)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Clouzot directs this unbelievable production, of a aging Picasso, to draw on his notoriety and fame, and teach painting on your VHS, on your DVD, on your Blu-Ray, in the Cinema, on TV, on your Computer! It's in the fine details, the process of painting is translated on camera to get a closer look into the brush that is Pablo Picasso. Cinema reaches it's highest output and result in this A+ visual experiment. I call it, "The Apex And History of Cinema."You get a behind the scene look in the filming, with some dialogue added to the fluid operations taking place using the, I think silk'ish canvas that would be transparent to capture on celluloid. One of the only films that you can never stop enjoying. To infinity, and then some. It's Picasso and Clouzot who validate cinema as fine art, or as close as you get to fine art, anyhow.

The Mystery of Picasso is to painting what Woodstock is to hippies: it's a definitive piece that comes only once in a very great while. Cluzot, the director, is innovative by just letting Picasso go on with his work, and like a good concert director only gets so much in the way to make it interesting as a piece of cinema. What we get here are almost two dozen pieces from Picasso- who, already in his old age, can still paint not only like some fiery master but with an A-game every step of the way- and the camera films it from the other side of the canvas most of the time, capturing what goes on it in a seamless style. We're never aware of a brush going onto the canvas, or color being added on from the paintbrush itself, but we know there's creation because we're seeing it made in front of our eyes. It's exhilarating if you're the right kind of audience.And by 'right kind of audience' I mean the kind that has an affinity or interest in art, and particularly for Picasso. I'm not art critic, so I can't pretend to go completely in-depth on all of Picasso's pieces, or explain definitively why they're good or crappy or masterworks. It is my opinion that Picasso's works are total originals, and they're like surrealist works from a childlike perspective, though still with a pure sense of the anarchic that we expect from such artistic rebels. But with certain drawings, like the two men staring at the woman, or the bullfighter and the bull, or that strange (dare I define which is stranger than one or another) picture of the flowers, or that creepy chicken, you don't really know what's going to happen next with the drawing or painting (especially if it's one of the ones in color and done in stop-motion), and this, alongside excellent and varied music, puts a sense of surprise into every painting, of what colors and movements will go next.I loved this movie, though as I said it takes a certain mood to get into it. Obviously, any fan of Picasso or any of those 'out-there' early 20th century masters will go completely ga-ga for the film, and for the innovative style that's mixed in (i.e. going in-between sometimes the canvas itself and Cluzot sort of 'directing' Picasso to go faster or to another picture). But even for those who usually don't have an interest in this stuff, it's worth taking a chance; you certainly won't see anything else like it in cinema.

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.

I was moved beyond words. It was amazing to see what this man was doing on canvas second-to-second. To actually see the decisions made and the mannerisms in his strokes is something that I did not know was possible until I saw this film on IFC. This is priceless.