Educational Media Reviews Online

In 1956 Henri-Georges Clouzot (director of Wages of Fear and Diabolique), and Pablo Picasso decided to make a film with the goal of capturing the artist’s creative process in an immediate and innovative way. They devised a technique where Picasso drew on a semi-transparent surface with special inks that bled through while the camera filmed the other side. The drawings then appeared as if animated, the lines unobscured by the guiding hand, the works of art unfolding before the direct gaze of the viewer. Starting with simple line drawings and progressing to complex paintings with washes and riots of color, Clouzot utilized a stop-motion filming technique to record the artist’s brushstrokes on wide canvas oil paintings. It is absolutely fascinating to see the works take form and morph, whole sections suddenly disappearing or transforming, colors changing and evolving. The dimensional effects are startling, shapes looking flat and hung in space, and then moving into three dimensions as color and shading are applied. The film contains very little dialogue, and the music composed for each painting by Georges Auric perfectly captures the playful and dramatic moods of each work. The director and artist appear sporadically in the film to talk a bit, a shirtless Picasso looking relaxed and vital at 73. Only two of the 20 paintings created for the film are said to still exist, Picasso and Clouzot mostly making good on their promise to destroy the works upon the film’s completion. No loss… the birth, sometimes-tortured development, and maturation of each piece is immortalized in this ageless film that is a masterpiece itself.

Milestone made brand-new prints using the original internegative, and this video is clearly superior to the Vestron video release of the late-eighties. Sound and picture quality are excellent; no audio hiss, the image clean and sharp, and the colors vibrant. A DVD release would be thrilling.

Highly recommended for art lovers and students, anyone interested in the creative process, and anyone.