Pablo Picasso paints directly onto a translucent canvas while Henri-Georges Clouzot's camera films from the opposite side, so the viewer watches each line and brushstroke appear in real time rather than seeing the artist's hands. Clouzot, best known for suspense films like Diabolique, shoots in a bare studio and uses specially rigged inks that soak through the surface, turning the act of painting into something closer to a filmed performance than a record of a finished object. Picasso works fast, building up bulls, faces, and abstract compositions, then erasing or painting over them entirely when he decides they're finished, so many of the works shown exist only in this footage. A ticking clock and a shrinking supply of film stock become real constraints late in the film, pushing Picasso to work against a countdown as the crew races to capture a final large-scale piece before running out of stock. The result is less biography than a document of concentration and improvisation, watching a working method rather than hearing about one.