毕加索的秘密

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is such a larger-than-life and unique personage who is bound to get numerous cinematic treatments, here is a brace of them, one centers on his tumultuous private life, another offers an innovative, direct look on his creativity and genius on the canvas.

James Ivory's SURVIVING PICASSO is a hallmark Ivory-Merchant production (which entails a script from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), and not the usual hagiographic kind. The story is lensed through one of his lovers, Françoise Gilot (1921-2023), who, literally, succeeds in "surviving Picasso". Picasso (Hopkins), the pick-up artist, first meets Françoise in Nazi-occupied Paris, she is 21 and he is 61. An aspiring artist herself, Françoise cannot resist being the "apple of the eye" of one of the major artists in the world and takes the plunge of shacking up with him, bearing 2 children for him in the following years.

How much has Françoise gained from Picasso, career-wise, is left untapped in SURVIVING PICASSO, there is mentioning of promoting her works in passing, but the toil of unconditionally subsuming herself into his life raises a red flag for all comers. Picasso is unqualifiedly self-centered, his needs and whims are of utmost primacy. Perpetually, Françoise's life must be orbited around his and she should always be at the beck and call of his dictates, and that doesn't mean she is enough for him. Picasso is always on the lookout for new muses in the name of inspiration, that could leave those women with a permanent scar, like his first wife Olga Khokhlova (Lapotaire), a member of the looney tunes, or an embittered Dora Maar (Moore, sporting an Eastern European accent standoffishly and fiddling with mumblety-peg manically); then there is Marie-Thérèse Walter (Harker), who is able to keep her marbles, yet still pointedly proprietorial when she sees a newcomer getting his favor.

Compared to them, Françoise is the lucky one because she is brave enough to implement a stop-loss severance, which ensures that she can maintain an amicable, yet independent relation with Picasso after their breakup, they can still be friends, chew the fat, under the alertness of Picasso's new flame and later second wife Jacqueline Roque (Venora). More than a ribald affair of exploiting Picasso's satyriasis, SURVIVING PICASSO is unconventionally modern in exhorting youngsters to heed the pitfalls of surrendering themselves to someone's genius. Hopkins is uncharacteristically flippant, even mischievous as Picasso, the hellion of an old man, but the film's real strength lies in McElhone's feminine resilience, her doe-eyed desire and internal disenchantment, it is her liberation we are rooting for, although the drama in question never culminates in a white-heat spectacle as in some best Ivory-Merchant productions, nor any colorful peripheral characters can be rightfully called "scene-stealing".

Now let's turn back time to 40 years earlier, in 1956, Picasso himself headlines Clouzot's documentary to reveal his artistry and THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO vouchsafes audience the privilege to witness the maestro's painterly techniques first-hand.

The whole process is fascinating, Picasso starts drawing with ink on a piece of white paper, meantime Clouzot sets the camera angling at the backside of the paper, with the ink bleeding through the paper, thus audience can watch the whole process with nearly real-time veracity in its mirror image. Gradually, he adds oil paint and collages onto the canvas, and his works become more and more variegated and elaborate. To save time (one painting takes Picasso several hours to finish), Clouzot effects a stop-motion-like technique to demonstrate how a Picasso's painting evolves and transmogrifies with his quirky brushstrokes to a transcendent end result, and how the same painting can morph into another with a multifaceted truly, seeing is believing.

That said, THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO is a one-trick pony, an inventive documentary serving as an irrefutable testimony of Picasso's genius, that and that only. Advisedly, the film should be obligatorily watched by all the art students around the globe, even for common viewers (like Yours Truly), to see Picasso's creative juice flowing in front of your face is something no less of a revelation.

referential entries: Ivory's THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993, 7.5/10), QUARTET (1981, 6.2/10); Orson Welles's F FOR FAKE (1973, 7.5/10).

Title: Surviving Picasso

Year: 1996

Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance

Country: USA

Language: English

Director: James Ivory

Screenwriter: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

based on the book by Arianna Huffington

Music: Richard Robbins

Cinematography: Tony Pierce-Roberts

Editor: Andrew Marcus

Cast:

Anthony Hopkins

Natascha McElhone

Julianne Moore

Dominic West

Peter Eyre

Susannah Harker

Diane Venora

Joseph Maher

Bob Peck

Joan Plowright

Allegra Di Carpegna

Jane Lapotaire

Joss Ackland

Dennis Boutsikaris

Peter Gerety

Laura Aikman

Nigel Whitmey

Vernon Dobtcheff

Rating: 7.2/10

English Title: The Mystery of Picasso

Original Title: Le mystère Picasso

Year: 1956

Genre: Documentary, History

Country: France

Language: French

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Music: Georges Auric

Cinematography: Claude Renoir

Editor: Henri Colpi

Cast:

Pablo Picasso

Rating: 7.4/10