Customer Reviews

Blood of a Poet [VHS]

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The particular edition I have seen (Timeless Video) is unwatchable. Apparently they recorded it from a television broadcast. After the first 23 minutes of this 55 minute feature, the top half of the screen is occupied by VCR data.

The movie itself is Cocteau's first effort, and the half I was able to see in this edition is a bit primitive, though one already sees visual themes used to great effect in Orpheus.

i may dislike cocteau's literature, but i'm a fanatic when it comes to his work in film. "blood of a poet" is such a gem that it almost makes up for the instinctual dislike and boredom i feel when reading his poetry and essays. from start to finish this masterpiece will fascinate and hypnotize the lover of surrealist art, and also lovers of film as a whole. the image i most love from this movie is the armless greek statue with a superimposed mouth on it's face. it is, of course, useless to try to interpret intellectually and it doesn't have a 'meaning' rationally, (at least to the viewer), but don't dismiss it as nonsense for this reason. revilers of surrealism don't seem to understand that art is the beauty of the irrational, NOT, as the classicists believe, an expression of excellence or perfection through order. the appeal of this movie lies in it's appeal to the dionysian, primal side of our aesthetic organ. sheer genius on the part of cocteau the like of which we may never be fortunate enough to see again in this age of multi million dollar special effects-corporate (...) festivals.