The Mystery of Picasso (1956)

Peter Greenaway was right. A work of art is never finished, only stopped.Mystery of Picasso is an incredible film that unveils the painter's ingenious techniques and is just as suspenseful and intriguing as anything else Clouzot ever did.The greatest art form of the 20th century records the greatest artist of the 20th century. Only Cinema could breathe this kind of life into the work of the master.Picasso attacks the canvas like a man possessed, tapping an infinite reservoir of imagination and creativity.He reworks and reinvents his paintings over and over again. The stop-motion techniques find perfect expression here and make the film seem less like live-action and more like a work of animation. Picasso's canvases are transformed into organic living creatures - in a constant state of metamorphosis and evolution.The best part about having this on DVD is the option of the viewer in deciding when enough is enough. All you have to do is hit the pause button and admire the masterpiece before you.The film is a perfect synthesis of an artist and a filmmaker - both at the height of their creative powers.

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.

I was moved beyond words. It was amazing to see what this man was doing on canvas second-to-second. To actually see the decisions made and the mannerisms in his strokes is something that I did not know was possible until I saw this film on IFC. This is priceless.

This is my favorite art film. The premise is simple: treat film as though it were a canvas and witness the process of creating a work -- brushstroke by brushstroke. The part where Picasso is laying down a beach scene -- layer by layer -- where the characters and background are continuously reworked is mesmerizing!