the inexhaustible inspirations of cocteau’s first film ‘le sang d’un poète’ from the 1930’s… there is obviously more to it than the cinematographic inventions and special effects. i find it a magnificent piece of work for it’s time. there seems to be a critical inventiveness that accompanied the interpretation of ‘new’ media at the time; something that we take for granted in the digital world of today, where the creativity has become a function of technology. i’m reminded of the improvisations of george lucas on the initial star wars trilogy… cocteau’s diverse aspirations probably needed several lifetimes to achieve their zenith, but his ‘jack of all trades’ artistry remains startlingly valid today…
the film contains such a wealth of layered metaphor and symbolic allusion to illuminate the poetically voyeuristic tableaux that cocteau describes as: a descent into oneself, a way of using the mechanism of the dream without sleeping, a crooked candle, often mysteriously blown out, carried about in the night of the human body.