Bad Movies We Love: The Picasso Summer
AGC Queen
Fans of ennui, animation and very bad acting love The Picasso Summer
Hands down, here's the goofiest Bad Movie premise in a blue moon: boring
architect drags boring wife all over Europe searching for Picasso, but --
despite an opening title that reads, "The producers gratefully thank Pablo
Picasso without whose help this film could not have been made" -- the duo never
finds Picasso! Sure, we've had terrible movies about people stalking Garbo,
Monroe and the Beatles, but 1969's The Picasso Summer, which reeks of artistic
pretense, is blissfully terrible.
Charmless Albert Finney announces to vapid wife Yvette Mimieux that they should
leave their chi-chi San Francisco digs to rush off to Europe to thank Picasso
for the joy his art has given them, adding that they must find him "before the
bomb goes off." We, however, know from the movie's opening -- a hilariously bad
'60s party à go-go, replete with freaky zoom shots and sequences showing us
glambombs with surrealistic eyeballs painted on their cheeks -- that the bomb's
already gone off.
Riding bikes aimlessly around the French countryside, the couple seems more in
need of a script than a tête-à-tête with Picasso. Mimieux stares dreamily into
mirrors, as if wondering what happened to really meaty roles like the bimbettes
she played in The Time Machine and Where the Boys Are. Finney drawls out his
dialogue as if he's had one too many Guinness stouts, but who can blame him?
The last time Finney had played an architect visiting France, in 1967's Two for
the Road, he'd had a real actress as a costar.
Complaining that instead of finding Picasso himself, they keep finding his work
in sculptures, paintings and even on plates, Finney belches, "Picassos, but no
Picasso." You'll be tempted to belch right back: "Movie, but no movie." Mimieux
heads for the important stuff -- clothes shopping. "I think it's kind of chic
and fun and casual!" she twitters about a ghastly shawl. Finney livens up
things over dinner by asking, "Did you know that snails are actually
hermaphrodites?" With lines like this, is it any wonder he then goes on an
all-night bender? When Finney turns up the next morning with a hangover and a
local wino in tow, Mimieux throws him out of their hotel. She should have
thrown him off the movie. Finney promptly travels to Spain. Why? He's heard
that the best way to meet Picasso is by learning bullfighting (don't ask).
Instead, he meets that other bald artiste, Yul Brynner (who clearly knew that
if you must appear in a rank movie, only do an unbilled cameo).
Summer goes most endearingly nuts during several long animation sequences,
popped randomly into the film, in which famous Picasso paintings are turned --
no! yes! -- into cartoons. If you've ever yearned to watch the artist's
Guernica pulsate into psychedelic blobs, if you've longed to watch Picasso's
famous bulls dance a madcap flamenco, or to see Minotaur's penis turn into a
mighty tree, then this is the Bad Movie for you.
The credits list the director as Robert Sallin, but that's far from the whole
story: Serge Bourguignon, French auteur of the Oscar-winning Sundays and
Cybele, was the original director of Summer, but after his version was deemed a
disaster, first-timer Sallin came in months later to reshoot key scenes. (You
can tell one hack's footage from the other's by watching Finney's hilariously
fluctuating weight, as he'd lost some 60 pounds between Summers.) It's
Bourguignon who comes out ahead, natch -- his name doesn't appear on-screen.
Coproducer Bill Cosby, screenwriter Ray Bradbury and cinematographer Vilmos
Zsigmond are all duly credited. Perhaps they're the ones responsible for
keeping this film off your video store shelves. Flood Warner Bros. with
letters, Bad Movie fans, demanding The Picasso Summer.
Send email to: PUSSS...@aol.com