The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“A miracle.”

François Truffaut

This extraordinary collaboration between Pablo Picasso and French master of suspense Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear, Les diaboliques) may be the most startlingly original documentary ever made about a great painter. Awarded the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1956, and declared a national treasure by France in 1984, the film employs some remarkable cinematic innovation. Clouzot and cinematographer Claude Renoir (grandson of Auguste and nephew of Jean) filmed from behind special transparent ​“canvasses” on which the artist drew with bleed-through inks; Picasso, in effect, is painting directly onto the screen before our very eyes. Twenty original works (most destroyed afterwards) are created in the film; certain sequences use time-lapse to animate the process. Picasso is a fascinating and volatile presence throughout. At one point, he complains that his canvas is too small—and, in a startling technical coup, the film bursts into the wider frame of CinemaScope.