Le Sang D'un Poete (aka The Blood Of A Poet) (1932)

An artist (Enrique Rivero) wipes away the mouth of a portrait he is drawing and finds the mouth has attached itself to the palm of his hand ... and it speaks to him! Thus begins Jean Cocteau's surrealistic journey of images that have no narrative tying them together. I suppose one could attempt to decipher a theme or a "message" from Cocteau's dream like voyage but why? It works perfectly well as a visual equivalent of a literary form. It's not what it means so much as what it makes you feel or project onto it. The film is purposely cryptic: a statue coerces a man to jump through a mirror, an abused child floats to the ceiling to avoid his tormentor, a lethal snowball kills a boy, an elegantly dressed couple play cards by a dead body whose guardian later literally absorbs the boy into himself, etc. One could call it Cocteau in Wonderland and you wouldn't be far off! The film is brief (less than an hour) but its images will stay with you much longer than that.