The Adventures of Picasso

Infobox Film
name = The Adventures of Picasso
original name = Picassos äventyr
caption =
director = Tage Danielsson
producer = Staffan Hedqvist
writer = Tage Danielsson, Hans Alfredsson (with a few ideas from Gösta Ekman.
narrator = Tovio Pawlo (Swedish version)
Bernard Cribbins (English version)
Ove Sprogø (Danish version)
Per Aabel (Norwegian version)
Raymond Bussière (French version).
starring = Gösta Ekman
Hans Alfredsson
Margaretha Krook
Bernard Cribbins
Wilfrid Brambell
Birgitta Andersson
Lennart Nyman
Per Oscarsson
Lena Nyman
Lena Olin
Rolv Wesenlund
music = Gunnar Svensson, Erik Satie
cinematography = Tony Forsberg, Roland Sterner
editing = Jan Persson
distributor = Svensk Filmindustri (SF)
released = 1978
runtime = 109 min.
country = Sweden
language =
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
imdb_id = 0078084

"The Adventures of Picasso" (original title: "Picassos Äventyr") is a 1978 Swedish film comedy directed by Tage Danielsson, starring Gösta Ekman, as the famous painter. The film had the tag-line "Tusen kärleksfulla lögner av Hans Alfredsson och Tage Danielsson" (A Thousand loving lies by Hans Alfredsson and Tage Danielsson).

Plot

The film is (very) loosely based on Pablo Picassos life and death, narrated by Tovio Pawlo, who introduces himself as Elsa Beskow. It opens with a quote by Picasso himself: "Art is a lie that leads us closer to the truth."The Story starts with Picassos birth in Málaga, Spain. His father, Don Jose (Hans Alfredsson) is an artist and discovers early his sons talent when the young boy makes a sculpture of Don Jose with his food. When Pablo is old enough (and now portrayed by Gösta Ekman) his father takes him to Madrid, so that Pablo can study art. On their way they encounter two robbers who tries to hurt a beautiful girl named Dolores (Lena Olin). After a slapstick number in witch Picasso defeats the two bad she gives him a bottle of paint, containing a djinn. With the paint from that bottle he signs all his paintings. At the academy of art Pablos talent is praised and awarded. And when he returns home with a portrait of his mother Dona Maria (Margaretha Krook) he is equally praised there. Unfortunately their happiness is ruined when Don Jose suddenly dies. Or so it seems. At the funeral it turns out he's actually still alive. Although Dona Maria keeps ignoring him with the words: "Idioto, tu és muerta".

Pablo leaves for Paris, but has a hard time selling any of his paintings. One day his father comes to visit him, bringin the sad news that Dona Maria is dead. When Don Jose starts to eat an apple that Pablo used as a reference for his painting Picasso starts to draw faster, still using the apple as reference. The result is the birth of cubism.This new style, however, is very hard to sell until Pablos dad gets an idea from a fishing rod. He lowers the painting down from a window during a vernissage. The overall reaction is negative, with comments like "Scandal", "Merde", "Oh, mon dieu" and "piss".One of the guests however, find the picture both "charming" and "marvelous" and declares that she wants to buy it. This lady is no other than the great writer Gertrude Stein (Bernard Cribbins) who is at the vernissage with her old friend Alice B. Toklas (Wilfrid Brambell).

After this, Picasso becomes the center of the artworld of Paris. Along with names like Braque, Matisse, Fernand Léger, Pompidou, Entrecôte, Carl Larsson, Karl-Alfred, Loulou, Dodo, Jou-Jou, Clo-Clo, Margot, Frou Frou, Jenny Nyström, Hejsan-Tjosan, Corselet, Omelette and Rembrandt (most of these names are just nonsense and mean other things than you might suspect). The Paris artworld also included Hemingway, who enjoys knitting, Erik Satie, Guillaume Apollinaire, Henri Rousseau, Vincent van Gogh and no less than two Toulouse-Lautrec. Along with Mimi, a waitress who gave Puccini the inspiration to "Thy tiny hand is frozen".

After this introduction to the artworld of Paris, the narrator tells about a "normal" day in Picassos life. It ends with a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Guggenheim from New York. Although the Swedish American multimillionaire Ingrid Svensson-Guggenheim (Birgitta Andersson) doesn't understand Picassos art she knows that it's expensive, and therefore immortal. She becomes a pest and at whatever the cost she becomes determind to become part of Picassos art and world. When Picasso no longer seems to be able to escape the annoying american his two friends Rousseau (Lennart Nyman) and Apollinaire (Per Oscarsson) invites him to Rousseaus hidden forest were Apollinaire reads some of his poems for his friends. This gives Picasso an idea. They will have a masquerade in Rousseaus honor.This masquerade has a lot of famous historic persons, most of them dressed as furniture. It all ends with Rousseau, while playing his violin, flying out the window and into the night of Paris.

Now it's 1914 and Picasso and all the humanity is looking forward to a bright future full with liberty, equallity and fraternity. This is all destroyed however with the coming of World War One and the headlines "KRASH! BOM! BANG!In 1918, when the war is over Pablo once again meets his father who has invented a new shampoo that will regain hair. It has another effect on Pablo however, who loses all of his hair and becomes bald.Shortly after this, Pablo gets the job to make the sets and clothes to the russian ballet. The ballet, that premiere in London does not become a sucesse however. Don Jose makes the ballets food and all the dancers ends up having gases. Picasso returns to Paris, were he meets Sirkka (Lena Nyman), a Finnish singer who sings a song that he becomes enchanted by. However, when it turns out that that song is the only one Sirkkas got on her repertoire Picasso soon gets sick of it and leaves for New York with his father.

In America there is a prohibition of art (a reference to the real prohibition of liquor). Pablo works underground and one day he is asked to deliver a set of pictures to a Mrs. X. It turns out that this mysterious woman is no other than Ingrid Svensson-Guggenheim. She doesn't give up so easily, but Picasso manages to escape her flirting.When delivering art to the local gangster Big Mac, Pablo, Don Jose and Ingrid Svensson-Guggenheim is caught in a shootout between Big Mac and his rival Mr. Peperoni. The shootout is interrupted however by a police razzia. A very foulmouthed cop accuses Pablo for being a murderer and that art is a lethal poison. It all turns into a trial against Pablo with Ingrid Svensson-Guggenheim and the two gangs as jury. Don Jose, acting as Pablos lawyer tries to defend his son, stating that Picassos work is not art, but childish graffiti. Pablo is still found guilty however and sentenced to death by the electric chair.The chair refuses to work however, and the electrician, a Norwegian named Grieg (Rolv Wesenlund), is sent in to fix it. It all backfires however and in the mess Pablo draws a door on the wall and escapes back to Europe.

In Europe however, "the monsters" Mussolini, Hitler and Franco has seized power. Don Jose joins the German army and later on becomes promoted to Hauptbahnhof in the SS, in charge of Operation Ostrich, with the mission to find opposition men in hiding. During the war, Picasso uses his apartment to hide opposition men. When the war is over, Don Jose quickly changes to french clothes, stating that " [He] likes Ike", waving the American flag and singing My Old Kentucky Home and charms the Americans in pretty much the same way he did with the Germans.After the second world war Pablo settles down at the riviera, were he once again mets the love of his youth, Dolores, and her granddaughter (who, like young Dolores, is played by Lena Olin. Inspired by them Picassos sends his doves (animated birds) out in a world plagued by the cold war.

After a while, Don Jose shows up again, with his new wife. Ingrid Svensson-Guggenheim. Picasso is trapped by his own fame, he has become an industry and his house is a museum. After drinking the last ink in the magic bottle Dolores gave him years ago he falls alseep and dies. At the same moment all the signatures on Picassos paintings disappears, it becomes The Great Picasso crash. But Picasso is not really dead. When everyone has left the room he gets up. Wawes goodbye to his paintings and fades into the wall.

Trivia

*Gösta Ekman originally thought it would be funny to write a book about a place that you never visited. In the same manner it would be funny to do a biography about a person you never met. Like Mozart, Jesus or Picasso.
*The movie contains 10 languages: Spanish, French, Swedish, German, Finnish, Italian, English, Russian, Norwegian and Latin. Most of these words are very simple (Agua = water etc.), sometimes meaning something different then they seem (Don Joses military rank, "Hauptbahnhof", wich means central station in German) and other times just being complete nonsense.
*Years after the movies release when Gösta Ekman went down to Budapest on vacation, he found that people looked at him in a very odd way. He eventually understood why when a local asked him if he were Picasso, to which Gösta replied, "If you mean that I played Picasso in a movie than, yeah, that's right." He later found out that the film was a great success in Hungary, were it has been playing on a Budapest cinema every year since it's release, and even had been turned into a stage play. Hans Alfredsson, who wrote the script along with Tage Danielsson and also starred as Pablos father, has seen the play and liked it. Commented that "It was very faithful to the film."
*The last collaboration between Hans Alfredsson and Tage Danielsson before Tage died in cancer in 1985.
*Sirkkas song is actually a recipe for pastry of fish and bacon.
*Despite the fact that this movie is set in Spain, London, Paris, the French Riviera and America most of the movie was shot in and around the Swedish town of Tomelilla. Many of the scenes are filmed at the same street. Using a glasspainting in front of the camera and changing a few things on the set, the filmmakers could turn the little street of Tomelilla into all the big citys shown in this film.
*All of Picassos paintings for this movie were maid by Per Åhlin. After the films premiere they were showed at a vernissage in Tomelilla with pricetags from 222 220 kronor and up. All except one, "Elsa Melon", that only cost 40 kr, but it had already been sold.
*Per Åhlin wanted the paintings to be destroyed after the vernissage so they wouldn't be spread as Per Åhlin-paintings when they were only "Per Åhlin-paintings that mimicked Picasso for a movie full of lies". According to the movies commentary track by Gösta Ekman, some of the paintings were saved by the cast and crew who now keeps them in their houses.
*The narration of this movie is the only thing that's dubbed in other languages, because of the multilanguage dialogue. In all versions it is a man who introduces himself as a famous female. In Sweden the narrator introduces himself as "Elsa Beskow", in English it's Gertrude Stein, in Danish it's Karen Blixen, in Norwegian it's Margaretha Munthe and the french narrator introduces himself as Mistinguette.
* Raymond Bussière, who does the french narration, had worked with Hasseåtage once before. Or more precily with Tage on his film The Man Who Quit Smoking, were he played a cabdriver who worked for Secret Service.
*Margaretha Krook, who portrais Pablos (Gösta Ekman) mother in this movie also portrayed Hånas (Ekmans) mother in "Morrhår & Ärtor" (1986).

References

* Staffan Schöier & Stefan Hermelin (2005). Hasse & Tage: Svenska Ord & co: Saga & Sanning