In a Season of Calm Weather, which told of an American tourist encountering Picasso on a French beach. Jean Renoir was picked to direct but the new project also stumbled when Picasso fell sick late in 1965. The Picasso Summer was re-energized two years later when Bill Cosby's production company took it on. French director Serge Bourguinon, whose 1962 feature Sundays and Cybèle had won an Oscar as best foreign picture, was signed, but the Picasso connection fell apart. The show went ahead with the idea that Picasso might still appear; the painter had once worked closely with director Henri-Georges Clouzot for 1955's The Mystery of Picasso. With the casting of the stars Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux, shooting began on French locations in 1967. The paper-thin story follows an architect and his wife on their impulsive trip to seek an audience with the famed painter. They bicycle across France to ring his doorbell but are stopped at his gate; George continues his quest by asking the help of Picasso's friend, toreador Luis Miguel Dominguin (himself). The bullfighter instead teaches George about the art of the bullring, while Mimieux's Alice spends meaningful time with an unknown artist (Peter Madden), who creates despite being blind. To express Alice and George's mystical discoveries, Herschensohn created more than a half-hour of abstract dream sequences using conventional cel animation. Inspired by Picasso's paintings and set to Michel Legrand's music score, the experimental passages include a highly-touted 'erotica sequence.' Pablo Picasso allowed a double to be seen in long shots but declined to participate in person. At the first studio screening, Ray Bradbury was furious to see that director Bourguinon had discarded his screenplay and ad-libbed much of the movie. Warner Bros. rejected the film's first cut and ordered reshoots by Robert Sallin, a prolific director of TV commercials who eventually took sole directing credit. After all that effort the film remained shelved for a full three years, only to surface in 1972 in a heavily edited version, broadcast on a CBS Television late show time slot. Herschensohn took out an ad in Variety to protest the removal of the erotica sequence as well as the bullfight scene. The Picasso Summer is best known today in liner notes for Barbra Streisand records: its music score by Michel Legrand includes the beautiful Marilyn & Alan Bergman song "Summer Me Winter Me", which had already become a radio standard a full two years before the film finally appeared.
By Glenn Erickson
