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Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

miloc Director Henri-Georges Clouzot, best known in America for his expert thrillers (Diabolique, The Wages of Fear, Le Corbeau) captures a different kind of suspense in this astonishing documentary: can the viewer think faster than Picasso?Of course not, don't be ridiculous. Pablo Picasso, seen here in his seventies, creates 20-odd paintings for the camera (a couple of them in real time), running rings around us as he goes. We see a line cross the screen, and then another, and then color spatters about; drawn on bleed-through paper the images come to us unmediated, like daydreams. Before we know it scenes take shape, populated by Picasso's stock company of matadors, clowns, leering old men, and towering, serene, bare-breasted women, their faces regally aloof.This is Picasso Playful. Clouzot informs him at one point that there are only five minutes of film left and asks him what he wants to do. The old man replies "It'll be a surprise," quickly sketching a bouquet of roses and then taking it through acrobatic transformations, faking us out with deadpan glee. His buoyancy counterweights some of the director's more awkward touches, such as the portentous intro, some over-dramatic music, a few probably staged conversations... but who cares? This is dynamic, visual cinema-- in a sense, a great animated film.Some of the earlier drawings are merely a master's doodles; others make your jaw drop with their absolute sureness of line. He'll send a stroke wriggling upward, graceful as a ribbon of smoke, and suddenly that wriggle is a bull with man tossed on its horns, and as the shapes gather and the colors erupt the thing becomes impossibly beautiful, a small perfection. Picasso returns to the image later, breaking out the oils, and here the film truly takes off. "I want to go deeper," Picasso tells Clouzot, and he does. We realize what we were missing in those first drawings: texture. The head of a goat coheres and takes on animal reality, the pigments bright as stained glass. Picasso ages it, makes it solid. What would be a major work for a lesser artist here is a throwaway, literally; the paintings were destroyed after filming. The least of them could have paid for my house.In that intro Clouzot says something about "looking into the mind of the artist" or somesuch, but the title really says it all. At the beginning the artist saunters out shirtless from the studio's shadows. At the end he declares, "It is finished," and saunters back. What could possibly account for the existence of a Pablo Picasso remains a mystery untouched.

horacekohanim This is a remarkable, swift, simple, beautiful, profound, fun and candid vision of the blank canvas turning into A Picasso. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot does just enough to infuse himself and the documentary presence of film, allowing the master to riff a couple dozen times. Simply watching the images appear and then evolve is a treat, scored with music. Picasso too brings some of himself to the film, but the dialogue is minimal, again focusing on the images he creates. This is a very memorable work. It could succeed in a classroom for elementary, high school or even college students. It could play on a loop at a party. An artist could play and rewind a particular sequence, perhaps wanting to copy Picasso's brilliance. Great.

hoytjsmith This film is as visually pleasing as it is intellectually stimulating. Much as time-lapse photography reveals in seconds the weeks-long emergence, growth and blooming of a sprout into a flower, "The Mystery of Picasso" reveals the growth and evolution of several paintings. Each stage of each creation is a painting unto itself. To watch this film is quite literally to browse a metaphorical gallery of progressively different compositions. Quite often, the viewer may feel that Picasso has gone too far; that he should have rested his paint brush and walked away earlier than he did. Of course that comprises the intellectual weight of the film. When is an artist done? It is a question that writers, poets, painters, even film makers ponder. Imagine reading alternative, unpublished chapters of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; or imagine watching several varying, unedited director's cuts of a Luis Bunuel film. Henri-Georges Clouzot leaves his audience with an incredible appreciation for the dynamic, living, breathing process that goes into each Picasso canvas. Clouzot adds drama toward the end by informing Picasso that his film is running out. Is it really? The maestro doesn't seem to be rushed. Either that or he performs remarkably well under pressure.

stephen-357 One of the greatest filmmakers of France, Henri-Georges Clouzot, makes a film about his friend Pablo Picasso, perhaps the 20th Century's most renown artist. Clouzot begins with a proposition: if one were present at the conception of a great artistic masterpiece such as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, and could peek inside the mind of the artist, what would one see? Fortunately, the visual art of painting offers a filmmaker that insight, and so Clouzot begins with Picasso in a dark room with white light directed at an empty canvas. The artist, like a bullfighter, confronts and ultimately displaces the empty space with drama and suspense. Clouzot takes a minimalist approach which chooses to focus on the art rather than the artist, and he achieves this objective by having Picasso sit on one side of a translucent canvas, and the camera on the other capturing only the ink or paint that has been administered, without the distraction or impediment of the artist - pure creation. A window into the mind of the artist! Twenty artworks are created in this manner, each being overlayed with the often suspenseful sounds of Georges Auric's excellent score. With THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO, art becomes exhilarating as one attempts to anticipate what Picasso will do next. "How will he resolve this problem?" Clouzot has created a priceless document for anyone seriously interested in art.