Le Sang d'un Poète (1930 Jean Cocteau & scr)

The mouth in an artist's sketch comes to life so he wipes it off - and the mouth ends up in the palm of his hand. Thus begins a remarkably strange film in which blood and suicide both appear amidst the spinning heads and two-way mirrors. "Mirrors should reflect a bit more before sending back images." Well, that's hard to disagree with. And "By breaking statues one risks turning into one oneself". Cocteau's stars appear all over the place too (even as a bullet hole).

The scenes in the hotel where the poet (the half clad Enrique Rivero) moves from door to door is really trippy, as are the 'flying lessons' he observes in one though the keyhole.

With a typically quirky score by Georges Auric and shot by Georges Périnal.

Is it surrealist? Not according to Cocteau. "In the film, I sleep on my feet. It is the story of a sleep-walker, but not of a dreamer. In that state of dozing in front of a fire, when the mind wanders, I express myself through signs. To describe it as a 'surrealist film' is laughable, and only proves the ignorance of historians of the mind." So there.

This, Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or were all made possible through the 'aristocratic whim' of the patron Vicomte Charles A. de Noaille. Cocteau had never stepped foot in a film studio before and had no experience whatsoever, which gave him the freedom to do 'whatever he liked'. He argues this is the way new film makers should begin. I think that's a very valid approach.

".....or how I was caught in a trap by my own film."