The Picasso Summer

I'll never understand Albert Finney's apparent popularity. His average looking face is usually frozen in a slight smirk, and he's only slightly more animated during one scene when he comes back drunk to their hotel room.

Yvette is both beautiful and authentic, although why she would be married to fussy Finney is a question not explored.

The big problem is this movie has too many moving parts: travelogue? Ode to Picasso? Or the story of a conflicted marriage? The cartoon sequences seem garish, almost frightening.

Just like in A Light in the Piazza, Yvette is a lovely focal point as she wanders ( alone ) the streets of southern France, and those are my favorite scenes.

This is the one thing that explained Picasso's paintings to me, when I just happened to see it on television many years ago.The long animated sequences extending the paintings are quite wonderful;they not only interpret the paintings but also show you why Picasso painted certain things the way he did - face extortions for example. All art students should be shown this film! It's also great for children. Whether the story surrounding the animations is any good I can't remember, but that's almost irrelevant! I have been searching for a copy of this film on video or DVD ever since these media became possible.But it just doesn't seem to be available. I can't understand why the film it is not shown on TV whenever there is a Picasso festival or exhibition.Can anyone tell me how I can get a copy of it?

Watching Picasso Summmer I think I can now accept that his work was not poking fun at wannabe art critics. For the 'uneducated eye' one has to wonder if what we're seeing...is how the artist is really viewing something; is it really a creative vision or a put on.

I did come away with a glimmer of understanding and motivation to do some research and reading on Picasso after viewing the film. All I knew about him from an art appreciation class in school is that he had a 'Blue period'.

As I said in the summary title, the morphing segments, while cleverly and creatively carried out, were way too many and way too long to sustain at least this casual viewer. The kernel of a good film was there, it just didn't 'pop.

I'd rather be in Guernica. Can you imagine how bad Serge Bourguignon's rough cut must have been for Warner Brothers to reject it in favor of this...what? Call it an R rated Rick Steves episode with stupid Picasso animated psychedelia alternating with dopey devices like the ol split screen/jigsaw puzzle as Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux bike around southern France, swim in the Med and copulate at the Carlton. Kind of a "Two For The Road" for idiots. And good luck getting that syrupy Michel Legrand score out of your head anytime soon. I bailed right around the time Mimieux and Finney temporarily split up and suggest you do the same before that. C minus.

This unusual film is the collaboration of several creative forces - a Ray Bradbury story, with animation created by the Hubleys (directed and "conceived" by producer Wes Herschensohn), a spectacular musical score by Michel Legrand, and co-direction by the near-forgotten Serge Bourguignon (of "Sundays & Cybele"). Unfortunately, it doesn't appear as if all of these people were properly introduced to one another. A successful architect (Finney) decides to chuck it all and run off to the south of France to visit his favorite painter, Pablo Picasso. Alas, Pablo isn't welcoming visitors and despite several attempts at stalking him, our architect-hero finally gives up. Albert Finney gives a frenetic performance with Yvette Mimieux never looking more beautiful beside him. Nothing in the film has anything linear about it, which is probably to its advantage. It is part fiction film, part docu-drama, part art documentary (the amimated Picasso paintings are probably the only real excuse for it - and they often come off as over-literal interpretations of his work). Ah, well, there is the lush music and the Vilmos Zsigmond photography and the elusive spirit of Picasso. Worth watching at least once.