The Blood of a Poet

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Country:France

Director:Jean Cocteau

Program:Parallel Pathways

Year: 
1930

Duration: 
60

Summary:

Jean Cocteau, the great renaissance man of the French Avant-Garde decided he would at last take on the cinema, and to do that he would attempt to describe the inner life of the poet and thus provide a metaphysical autobiography of his youth. Told in four episodes, the figure of an artist stunningly passes through a mirror into another dimension, where he is enmeshed in various bizarre scenarios. Many of the visual tricks that Cocteau would continue to explore make their appearance here. This film would initiate Cocteau’s signature work, The Orphic Trilogy, which would take the rest of his lifetime to complete with Orpheus and The Testament of Orpheus appearing over the next thirty years.