The Blood of a Poet

Critics Consensus

No consensus yet.

94%

TOMATOMETER

Total Count: 18

86%

Audience Score

User Ratings: 2,919
User image

Movie Info

In the first of this film's four episodes, a tall smokestack starts to collapse. Then the scene shifts to a young poet who is sketching faces. He sees that a sketch's mouth is moving and wipes it off with his hand; the mouth attaches itself to his palm. Eventually he transfers the mouth to a statue in his room. In the second episode, the statue tells the poet to enter a mirror. He falls into the darkness of the mirror's interior and finds himself at the Hotel de Folies-Dramatiques. The poet crawls along the hallway and peers into the keyholes, where he sees various bizarre situations. He reaches the end of the hallway, someone hands him a gun, and he shoots himself. The poet returns to his room and smashes the statue; then he becomes a statue himself in a courtyard. In the third episode, a group of boys engage in a snowfight in the courtyard. The statue is destroyed and one boy is left bloody and possibly dead after being hit with a snowball. In the final episode, the courtyard is revealed to be a stage on which a young woman and the poet play cards next to the boy's body, which is still lying on the ground. The woman tells the poet that he is lost without the Ace; he takes the card from the boy's jacket. The boy's guardian angel appears and covers him. He takes the Ace from the poet and leaves; the poet shoots himself in the head and the audience applauds. The woman walks away and it is revealed that she is the statue; then the film ends with the final collapse of the tall smokestack. ~ Todd Kristel, Rovi

Cast

Enrique Rivero
as The Poet
Elizabeth Lee Miller
Pauline Carton
as Child's Tutor
Odette Talazac
Jean Desbordes
as Louis XV masked
Lee Miller
as The Statue
Féral Benga
as Black Angel
Fernand Dichamps
Barbette
as Woman in Box/at Balcony
Jean Cocteau
Lucien Jager
View All

Critic Reviews for The Blood of a Poet

All Critics (18) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (1)

View All Critic Reviews (18)

Audience Reviews for The Blood of a Poet

  • May 05, 2016
    Jean Cocteau's 1930 film "The Blood of a Poet" is a surrealist film split up into four parts, but what do these parts mean? It is an incredibly well-made film and has an almost dream like structure. People come and go as do objects and images.
    Joseph B Super Reviewer
  • Aug 31, 2011
    Cocteau is a revolutionary expressionist that does not belong to the surrealism movement as any Buñuel fan would claim. His purposes were merely artistic and his first masterful debut of the bizarre is a passionate tribute to the enigmatic. Dreamlike and seductive, <i>Le Sang d'un Poète</i> is a breathtaking journey into the realm of the type of mind we will never understand unless we take our lives towards another direction. 99/100
    Edgar C Super Reviewer
  • Dec 16, 2009
    This dialog-free film, originally presented as 33 short films, is an experimental, bizarre set of meditations and flashbacks of the grotesque
    Wahida K Super Reviewer
  • Dec 14, 2008
    Words can't describe this masterpiece
    Arash X Super Reviewer
See all Audience reviews

The Blood of a Poet Quotes

There are no approved quotes yet for this movie.

News & Features