The Mystery of Picasso

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1 General Information
2 Cover
3 Information
4 Screenshots
5 Technical Specs
6 Links

[edit] General Information

Arts Documentary hosted by Henri Georges Clouzot and published by Others in 1956 - French narration

also known as

Le Mystère Picasso

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

Like a matador confronting a bull, the artist approaches his easel, his eyes blazing. As he wields his brush, we see through the canvas as the artwork unfolds, erupts, dances into being before our eyes. Pablo Picasso, the most influential artist of the twentieth century, is making a painting, and Henri- Georges Clouzot, the famous French director (The Wages of Fear, Diabolique), is making a movie.

In 1955, Clouzot joined forces with his friend Picasso to make an entirely new kind of art film — a film that could capture the moment and the mystery of creativity. Together, they devised an innovative technique — the filmmaker placed his camera behind a semi-transparent surface on which the artist drew with special inks that bled through.

Clouzot thus captured a perfect reverse image of Picasso’s brushstrokes and the motion picture screen itself becomes the artist’s canvas. Here, the master creates, and sometimes obliterates, 20 works (most of them, in fact, destroyed after the shoot), ranging from playful black-and-white sketches to Cinemascope color murals — artworks which evolve in minutes through the magic of stop-motion animation. Unavailable for more than a decade, The Mystery of Picasso is exhilarating, mesmerizing, enchanting and unforgettable. It is simply one of the greatest documentaries on art ever made. The French government agreed — in 1984 it declared the film a national treasure.

Extra: Guernica (1950), a film, by Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, La Guerre est finie) and Robert Hessens that uses various works by Picasso along with images of newspaper headlines to illustrate an anti-war sentiment, with his mural Guernica (1935-7), painted as a cry against the Spanish Civil War, as its centerpiece. The reading by Jacques Pruvost and actress Maria Casarès (Children of Paradise, Cocteau's Orphée) is très sérieux and reads like a Beat anthem—it was written by poet Paul Eluard—and is supported by a properly discordant score. The image shows the wear of time and has a preponderant darkness, but one can still be moved by its content as intended.

[edit] Screenshots

[edit] Technical Specs

Video Codec: XviD
Video Bitrate: 1543 kbps
Video Resolution: 640x480
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1
Audio Codec: MP3
Audio Bitrate: 128kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Languages: French
RunTime: 74 mins
Part Size: 895MB
Subtitles: English/Portuguese
Ripped by: Dentje

Extra:
Video Codec: XviD
Video Bitrate: 1876 kbps
Video Resolution: 640x448
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.429:1
Audio Codec: MP3
Audio Bitrate: 105kb/s VBR 48000 Hz
Audio Languages: French
RunTime: 13 mins
Part Size: 185MB
Subtitles: English/Portuguese