Dorothée Lachaud did not wait for the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) to produce in 2021 this Correspondences: Jean Cocteau-Pablo Picasso, which France 5 rebroadcasts in the additional framework of the sixty years of that of Jean Cocteau ( 1889-1963). The journalist took as a framework the missives exchanged by the two artists between 1915 and 1963 – two hundred and eighty letters from Cocteau, fifty from Picasso – a largely unpublished legacy published by Pierre Caizergues and Ioannis Kontaxopoulos (Gallimard-Musée Picasso, 2018).
The choice was made of a linear story told by a voice-over (Marie-Sophie Ferdane), with some rare filmed archives of Cocteau, based on a stitching of extracts from letters, third-party declarations (Maya Ruiz-Picasso who evokes the “rays of celebrity” of his father “which Cocteau captured better than the others”). Cocteau is played by Laurent Natrella, Picasso by Féodor Atkine, actor and specialist in accent dubbing.
In this way, the arch of the period considered – from the first requests for meetings from Cocteau, still little known, to the already famous painter, until the last letter that Picasso receives the day after the death of his friend – is covered in great strides, but in a convincing manner, which will teach the essential to the non-expert.
Factual and well-illustrated story
The first war parades – in which Picasso, a Spaniard, no more than in the second, took part -, the artists who migrate from Montmartre to Montparnasse, the success and the gentrification of the painter “with the inky gaze”, the shared adventure of the Ballets Russes, Picasso’s wives (often intercessors between the two men), the painter’s flirtation with the surrealists (who hated Cocteau), the hurtful remarks published by Picasso against Cocteau which caused a ten-year estrangement.
The years of the Occupation followed, Cocteau’s Salut à Breker, but also his interventions to help Max Jacob (whom Picasso abandoned when he was one of his close friends from his youth), Cocteau’s successes in the stage, at the cinema, the Spanish Civil War, Guernica, the years of the Côte d’Azur – Picasso in Vallauris (in the Alpes-Maritimes), Cocteau at his rich friend Francine Weisweiller in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat ( in the Alpes-Maritimes too) –, bullfighting, etc.
But, in this factual and well-illustrated story (albeit with filmed documents which do not always correspond to the period considered), the reciprocal creative influence is notably missing (not only in the sense of Cocteau blissfully admiring Picasso), the erotic component of their bond, Picasso’s phobic relationship with death. In this last regard, if it is recalled that the Spaniard, appearing in the film The Testament of Orpheus (1960), by Cocteau, is stunned by the scene where the latter films himself lying down, not a word about the absence of the painter at the funeral of his old friend…
For a finer and more complete psychological analysis of this relationship, you should refer to the beautiful book Picasso tout contre Cocteau (Grasset, 240 pages, 20.90 euros), by Claude Arnaud, the author of the reference biography of Cocteau (Gallimard, 2003), which deciphers and develops the fairly sadomasochistic relationship of a “couple [who], periods of intense seduction [alternating] with phases of annoyance, always reformed, for half a century”.