"Glory, glory forever"

“Le sang d'un poète” (The Blood of a Poet - 1930) is the first instalment in Jean Cocteau’s partially autobiographical Orphic trilogy, which through uniting disparate artistic forms explores the creative process.

“The Blood of a Poet” deals less directly with the Orpheus myth than the following two films of the trilogy. There is a loose association between the artist/poet (Enrique Rivero) and Orpheus, their shared extra-human perceptive ability, both a gift and a burden allowing the artist figure to move back and forth between spheres that strongly connote death, Hades in the Orpheus mythology and here the Other/mirror-world. Cocteau, self-identifying as a poet, is ruminating on the artist’s sacrifice for art and the desire for glory; the artist's suicide attempt is in the endeavour for "eternal glory", a concept repeated but never achieved as both artists and artworks are consistently and repeatedly fractured and destroyed. 



The protagonist, if he can be conceived as such in a largely non-narrative film, travels into the other-world at the command of a statue (Elizabeth Lee Miller) that he himself gave life to. Greene (“Deadly Statues: Eros in the Films of Jean Cocteau,” 1988) argues that these most autobiographic films follow the artist as subservient to a powerful and cold woman in a display of masochism, alluding to Rossetti’s 'Venus Verticordia' (pictured left) as indicative of this woman-figure, manifested in various forms in “The Blood of a Poet”, threatening and beautiful. Although sexual overtones run strongly through this film, I find it limiting to see the artist’s service to his art, manifest in the statue-woman, as purely masochistic. 

Most interesting in the artist's destruction of the statue is that the first swing of the mallet takes her face off cleanly, as a mask, before destroying the rest of her body. The camera lingers on his stationary legs and torso contrasted to the dismembered, fractured stone body segments. This film has a preoccupation with the incomplete human body, whether it be the spinning wire mask frames or the recurring instance of statues missing limbs, Cocteau may be arguing for the beauty of the incomplete. Surrealist cinema upsets the human drive to enforce order upon chaos; this film is as the concept of constellations in the sky, trying very hard to see a narrative pattern that simply doesn’t exist. 

When the marble dust has settled and the artist has closed his eyes, the illusion of the artist as transformed into the very thing he destroyed is complete - “By breaking statues one risks turning into one oneself. Again glory, glory forever.” Film, as a moving medium, is uncomfortable when in stasis. Extended shots of stationary objects disquiets. Although the transition immediately following the artist’s transformation into the third part commences with energy and childhood vibrancy, the violent death of a child again stills the frame.

If what Wikipedia tells me is true, the original audience applauding the suicide of the poet in this third section consisted of the financial backer of the film, the wealthy socialite Vicomte de Noailles, along with his wife and friends. Upon discovering what it was they applauded, Noailles forced Cocteau to change the scene, who replaced Noailles with Barbette, the famous female impersonator. The film suffered delayed release due to fears of presenting immoral messages as supported by Barbette's role.  

The content is impossible to categorise or analyse, but commentary on the suffering of the poet and allusions to the Orpheus myth are discernible. Cocteau’s use of imaginative effects and striking visual elements, from the juxtaposition of the dead child to the socialite card game and the manipulation of camera to create a world removed from the laws of physics, “The Blood of a Poet” signifies many of the traits I expect from surrealist cinema - an unusual, unsatisfying but entertaining experience.