gengar843 Here's my interpretation. As a young man, the artist, as the bully, killed a boy (the snowball fight) and covered it up. As he grew, he became an artist, not interested anymore in fighting (the artist ignoring the battle outside), a consequence probably of his conscience. He became involved with a woman (the statue, the card player) who knew nothing of his past. This, I think, is so deep and meaningful, that we never know the history of the person we are with unless they choose to share it. The artist is so filled with self-loathing that he commits suicide. This explains the revolver, and even the firing squad. The mirror, the reflection of ourselves, draws the artist into his own mind where he has trouble escaping. While there, he views many escapes for himself, including death, opium, flying away (a fantasy).The mouth on the hand seems to me much more symbolic of narcissistic behavior. It is masturbatory. This concept is fortified such various elements as the artist being half-dressed, showing off, and even the hermaphroditic scene. The artist lives in a world of self-love but it cannot bury the past, the killing of the boy, which haunts him.I do not know if Cocteau drew on his own experience here, or if this was anecdotal to his life, or even if it was imagination.Anyway, just some food for thought!

akells This film is brilliant, but I do wish people would stop calling it a surrealist masterpiece! Cocteau was NOT a part of the surrealist movement - in fact the surrealists, especially Andre Breton, the founder of surrealism - hated him. I think it was Breton who said that Blood of a Poet was 'a bad copy of a surrealist film' (or words to that effect). And Cocteau never thought of himself as a surrealist.Obviously, the word surrealism now is applied to anything strange, weird, wacky etc. But I think you do need to be accurate when discussing art that was made at a time when surrealism was a specific, and new, movement!

Nazi_Fighter_David In film, Jean Cocteau found the perfect medium to portray his own personal mythology… Though his involvement in cinema was uneven, spasmodic and largely undertaken during later life, his fantastic images, well-meaning amateurism and continuous self-preoccupation were inspirational to the avant-garde and underground… By 1930, when Cocteau made his first film, he was already an established poet, novelist, dramatist and artist… "Le Sang d'un poète" (The Blood of a Poet) was a characteristically romantic portrait of the artist structured as a surreal succession of images centered on a private mythology: desiring immortality, the poet, martyr to creativity, must first pass through a mirror into a deathly private dream-world… Financed, like "L'Age d'Or," by the Vicomte de Noailles, its indulgent celebration of artists in general (and, therefore, Cocteau in particular) makes it inferior to Buñuel's film, but its strong, bizarre symbolism is often alarming

NateManD Jean Cocteau's "the Blood of a Poet" is a very strange film. Even by todays standards, but I can't imagine the response in 1930. The film was funded by the same producer of Bunuel/Dali's "L Age D Or"(1930). Cocteau considered the film expressionism even though it feels like surrealism. His goal was to film a poem. In the beginning of the film we witness a chimney collapse. Then we are introduced to an artist. He is doing a sketch and erases the mouth. The mouth appears on his hand and starts to talk. Then when his hand touches the statue, it comes to life. He enters the mirror and it takes him to a strange hotel, behind each door is something bizarre happening. One room a boy is trying to fly, another room there's a strange man with a spiral. Then the artist goes crazy and shoots himself. Then the film goes on to a dreamlike violent snowball fight and game of cards, and another suicide attempt. Very unique, highly surreal with slight homo-erotic overtones; "The Blood of a Poet" feels like waking up from a crazy dream!