The Picasso Summer
| The Picasso Summer | |
|---|---|
| Directed by |
Serge Bourguignon Robert Sallin |
| Produced by |
Bruce Campbell Wes Herschensohn |
| Written by |
Ray Bradbury (alt Douglas Spaulding) Edwin Boyd |
| Starring |
Albert Finney Yvette Mimieux Luis Miguel Dominguín |
| Music by | Michel Legrand |
| Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond |
| Edited by | William Paul Dornisch |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 90 min. |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
The Picasso Summer is a 1969 drama directed by Serge Bourguignon and Robert Sallin, starring Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux. The screenplay was written by Ray Bradbury (using the pseudonym of Douglas Spaulding) [1] based upon his short story, "In a Season of Calm Weather." [2]
Future Academy Award winner Vilmos Zsigmond was the cinematographer. There were two directors. Serge Bourguignon was the original director whose rough cut was rejected by Warner Bros.. Another director, Robert Sallin, was hired to reshoot some scenes and to do the changed ending. Even with the reworked scenes, the movie was never released to theaters in the United States. It was sold for distribution to TV networks and stations with Sallin receiving the director's credit.
Plot summary
George Smith (Albert Finney) is a bored, young San Francisco architect, at loose ends and feeling a bit depressed after finishing a project in which he felt his contribution was of little consequence. After he and his wife Alice (Yvette Mimieux) attend a vacuous party, they go home and George reassesses his life. George thinks about how much he admires Pablo Picasso, the great artist, who pursues his dreams with abandon. He suddenly feels an overwhelming urge to meet the artist and proposes to his wife that they fly to France that very evening in search of him. They arrive in the south of France and after a day or two of searching, arrive at the gate of his villa, only to be told that he sees no one. After a dismal dinner at a local restaurant, George goes off to a bar, while Alice returns to the hotel. The next morning, she is awakened by a drunken George, who returns with an equally drunken Frenchman whom he has befriended. By this time, George's obsessive quest has begun to wear thin. She refuses to accompany him to Spain in pursuit of a famous matador who, he has been told, is a friend of Picasso's and may be persuaded to furnish an introduction to Picasso. George goes off by himself and has an adventure in Spain with the matador, while Alice wanders about the French town alone. She meets a blind painter and his wife, who invite her home for supper and give her one of his paintings. George returns, thoroughly disappointed and disgusted that his great quest has come to nothing. He apologizes to Alice for taking her on such a miserable vacation. They go for one last swim at the beach before walking off into the sunset, ironically failing to notice Picasso, at the same beach with his family, standing a few hundred yards away, drawing fantastic figures in the sand.
Differences between the original story and the movie
While the basic plot is the same, the movie introduces some changes and new elements. One new element is a series of animated sequences in which Picasso's paintings are made to come to life on the screen in a colorful panoply of shifting shapes and dancing figures. Another is the quarrel between George and Alice, and also their separate adventures. In a long sequence about bullfighting (a number of Picasso's works deal with bullfighting), Luis Miguel Dominguín demonstrates and explains the meaning of the intricate ballet between the matador and the bull, as the matador repeatedly challenges death on the horns of the bull before finally ending the duel with a swift and precise thrust of his sword. Having thus passed through "the valley of the shadow of death," he walks away victorious, to the cheers of the spectators, until his next encounter.
The biggest difference between Bradbury's story and the movie is the ending. The original story ends in typical, whimsical Bradbury fashion. George does meet Picasso, but in the end is left with only the memory of a physical reality that he realizes will soon fade away. The movie has an ironic ending, in which George and Alice come within a few hundred yards of Picasso, but fail to notice him, so they never meet.
Cast
- Albert Finney as George Smith
- Yvette Mimieux as Alice Smith
- Luis Miguel Dominguín as Himself (the bullfighter)
- Theo Marcuse as The Host
- Jim Connell as The Artist
- Sopwith Camel as The Band at the Party
See also
References
- ↑ Douglas Spaulding is a protagonist in several of Bradbury's works, most notably Dandelion Wine.
- ↑ First published in Playboy (January 1957) and later anthologized in the book A Medicine for Melancholy.