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I fear that my contributions to this thread begun by Henry Taylor were - in the end - overlong. Apologies for that. Passion overriding temperance, and perhaps mis-judgement of the requirements of forum members. I'm genuinely grateful to Henry Miller for providing dates on the releases respectively of BLOOD OF A POET and THE SKIN GAME. Henry, I think it's a non-sequitur that Hitchcock must have 'been admitted to earlier, private screenings' (than the public premiere) of Cocteau's film. Very likely, he simply heard or read about Cocteau's intention for the film's opening and closing shots, namely, a factory chimney beginning to fall, and the completion of that fall. In turn, Hitch decided to begin and end THE SKIN GAME with shots of a tree starting to be felled and of the tree completing its fall. The influence of the Cocteau film on Hitchcock's is patent, at any rate. Later, in 1960, in his learned article for a French journal on "Pourquoir J'ai Peur la Nuit"/"Why I Am Afraid of the Dark", Hitch cited BLOOD OF A POET among representative surrealist films, and noted that he had experienced the surrealist influence himself, 'if only in the dream sequences and the sequences of the unreal in a certain number of my films'. - KM -- To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the Film-Philosophy list, please visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html -- Film-Philosophy Journal: http://www.film-philosophy.com/ Film-Philosophy Conference (London 12 - 14 September 2012): http://www.film-philosophy.com/conference/ --