Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Bookmark this pageLe Sang d'un Poète (1930)
Director: Jean Cocteau
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Cocteau described this first feature as the playing with one finger of a theme that he orchestrated in Orphée twenty years later. That puts it fairly enough: the movie has an avant-garde roughness and unpredictability in its construction and use of symbols, but it's fundamentally a very characteristic, neo-Romantic study of the joys and agonies of being an artist. It's in two distinct parts. The first presents the artist (Rivero) trapped by his own work, eventually opting for the rebirth of a romantic martyrdom; the second plunges back into autobiography (reworking the snowball fight from Les Enfants Terribles), and resolves itself into a 'cosmic' riddle. The honesty and robustness of the images prevents the movie from lapsing into pretension or preciousness; it remains extremely interesting as a source of Cocteau's later work.Author: TR
Cast & crew
Director: Jean Cocteau
Producer: Vicomte de Noailles
Cast: Lee Miller, Pauline Carton, Odette Thalazac, Enrique Rivero, Jean Desbordes, Fernand Dichamps, Jean Cocteau full cast
Duration: 53 mins
Top Stories
Ridley Scott interview
Director Ridley Scott tells Cath Clarke why he's making a science fiction comeback
Cannes Film Festival 2012: half-time report
Dave Calhoun reports on the hits, misses and a shocking new masterpiece from Michael Haneke
What do you think?
Post your review now