by Travis Mackenzie Hoover J. Hoberman once stated that the critic who forgoes the avant-garde "has as much claim to serious attention as a historian who never heard of the Civil War." If that's the case, Kenneth Anger is the avant-garde's Ulysses S. Grant. Lurking in the boho wilderness long before awareness of the New American Cinema spread, he's an influential figure not only in the underground but also in the mainstream. A young Martin Scorsese watched Anger's leather-boy opus Scorpio Rising, gasped at its radical use of popular music, and promptly swiped it for his Mean Streets, thus setting off a chain of events that would end up–somewhat unpleasantly–at the films of Tarantino. That director's incorporation of pop-cult detritus likewise has its roots in the camp underground of which Anger is a part–though our avant-gardist chose to pilfer from Crowley and Kabbalah in addition to the leftovers of pop.
But Anger's achievement is on his own terms. His luxuriant, satanic camp is at once deeply serious and completely innocent; he seems genuinely awed by sensuous surfaces and the idea of magical power, though not to the point of solemnity and joylessness. He understands–at least in the early films on offer from Fantoma–that the idea of decadence is one of joy and pleasure. With extremely limited resources (much of them borrowed from bohemian friends in his Hollywood stomping grounds), he managed to paint a portrait of erotic wonder towards both humans (the sailors of Fireworks, the starlet-ish protag of Puce Moment) and objects (fabrics in Puce Moment, water and architecture in Eaux d'artifice), evocatively conveying a wish to touch and feel their awesome substance. Part of this is, yes, a love of the occult (controversially leading to his befriending of Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil), but that's just a more intense version of the dissipation to which he aspired.
There's meanness to some Anger, especially his notorious Tinseltown scandal book Hollywood Babylon (written in 1958, published in America in 1974) and the more blasphemous moments of the otherwise redoubtable Scorpio Rising. The first DVD volume of his work, however, shows a gentler side of the filmmaker–perhaps less in his career-defining breakthrough Fireworks (which nonetheless brings its hero back to the gentle tableau in which it first finds him) than in the blinding colours of Puce Moment's Odalisque-ian womanhood, the gentle miming of Rabbit's Moon, the flamboyant myth-playing of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, and the fantastic Tivoli fountains of Eaux d'artifice. They make manifest the many tender obsessions of their director while giving immense pleasure to the open-minded viewer. Please note that the letter grades below refer to video, audio, and commentary, respectively.
The movie that put Kenneth Anger on the map, Fireworks (1947, 15 mins., ***/****, A/B/A) is all the more amazing for the filmmaker's young age. 19-year-old Anger himself plays a young man who wakes up, enters a room marked GENTS, admires a bodybuilder flexing his muscles, and is subsequently menaced and beaten by a crowd of sailors brandishing chains. While one would normally chalk this up to pure masochistic fantasy, it would appear that things are more complicated than that: in his commentary, Anger cites the Zoot Suit Riots (and their instigation by racist sailors) as defining the key image for the film as well as the dream that inspired it, suggesting that the mass battery scene is done for menace and not for thrills. Still, like unconscious dream and conscious fantasy, it's often hard to separate one from the other, and the sense of sexual ambiance is hard to shake. Consider the bookends in which another sailor holds Anger in his arms, the brief shot of a urinal, a reclining naked man, or the notorious image of a sailor lighting a Roman candle in his crotch: in pain or pleasure, ecstasy is the film's guiding force.
Restored by the UCLA archives, Fireworks looks excellent here: though there's blurriness and graininess we can chalk up to a nascent legend fumbling with tech issues, the print itself has been significantly scrubbed of defect. The Dolby 2.0 mono sound is muffled and tinny but that, too, can be chalked up to technical problems of the day; if the orchestral score sounds a bit soft, at least there are no hisses or pops to further detract. The aforementioned yakker by Anger clears up many issues surrounding the film's more obscure images (such as the Christmas tree entering the fire) and is lively and detailed in remembering the 72-hour shoot that took place while his parents were away at a funeral. Remarkably gracious, he's more than happy to credit his sailor collaborators. A 2-minute restoration comparison does what it should, while a summary of the video correction process prefaces this and Rabbit's Moon.
After the solemn black-and-white of Fireworks, the blast of colour that is Puce Moment (1949, 5 mins., ***/****, A/B+/A) feels at once livelier and more potent. The beginning is a volley of shimmering sequined fabrics lunging at the screen; eventually the vignette–part of a larger tapestry that was never completed–gets around to Yvonne Marquis and her violet flapper outfit as she relaxes (her chaise longue moves as she reclines) and poses with regal-looking dogs. A camp artifact par excellence, it could be quoting from Susan Sontag's famous essay: there is a constant awareness of the artificial nature of the pose and the outfit, which is all the more reason to revel in its innocent but imposing pleasures. The hues are of course highly saturated and Marquis is perfect for her role–think Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet, only a whole lot happier with her lot in life.
The presentation is slightly wobblier this time around: although the colour is immaculately saturated and separated and the definition is crisp, there's quite a bit of grain to contend with, probably due to the slower speed of colour stock circa the late-Forties. Otherwise, the slashing hues and glittering detail rock the eye. The mono sound is a little better than Fireworks', largely devoted as it is to some Jagger-ish folk singer I presume was added years after shooting; it's a bit muffled but clear enough to capture his laconic drawl. Anger's commentary is full of information, some of which may even be true: I'm never going to believe that Marquis became the mistress of the Mexican president, but he's right to say "that's just as good as a Hollywood film career." A 1-minute restoration comparison appends the title.
Showing what Anger could do with a modicum of a budget, this is a studio-shot production completed in France with students from the Marcel Marceau School of Mime. Unfortunately, the four weeks he was allotted were insufficient, and the results mouldered in a vault until they were resurrected in the early-'70s and puzzlingly scored to doo-wop. Sort of doing for mime what Powell and Pressburger did for opera and ballet (though Von Sternberg was the stated influence), Rabbit's Moon (1950/1971, 16 mins., ***/****, A/A-/A-) features a sad Pierrot being manipulated by a demonic Harlequin through the glory of a magic lantern Columbine with whom he falls in love. To be honest, the gossamer-winged tableaux seem slightly mocked by the musical selections, but it's a magical movie nonetheless, one that swathes superb performances by the three principals in lovely, blue-tinted black-and-white.
On DVD, Rabbit's Moon is rightly sharp and deep for such a detailed and sensual production: there are a couple of print defects beyond the restorationist's capabilities, but mostly it's a great-looking transfer that folds around you like velvet. (Too, this incarnation corrects a longstanding accidental reversal of left-to-right action.) Music on the mono soundtrack is faint yet potent enough to get the musical point. Anger's commentary is a little vaguer here, but he's got big props for his DP and thoughtfully points out the comedia dell'arte characters and the obscure Japanese symbolism of the rabbit and the moon. Three minutes of outtakes follow, a few of them quite funny as the made-up abstractions break character and laugh.
Eaux d'artifice (1952, 12 mins., ***½/****, B/A-/A-) was shot at the Villedeste water gardens in Tivoli, Italy–and Anger never lets you forget it. It's a flamboyantly elegant paean to the location that simply allows a woman (one Carmillo Salvatorelli, a dwarf in 17th-century drag) to walk amongst the stone façades and cascading waters as the director intercuts their sensuous shapes and surfaces. Set to Vivaldi, Eaux d'artifice is as expertly shot and edited as anything in the Anger canon–if style for style's sake: there's nothing to see save the touch of imagery and the flow of water. But it's beautiful.
This is the most ragged transfer of the bunch: I couldn't tell whether the flickering on the blue-tinted b&w was a fault of the elements or of the telecine operators, but its occasional incursions are a bit of a nuisance (it's sharp and well-defined otherwise), as is the quite-heavy scrim of grain. Again, the mono music track is muffled but highly present, with a softness that befits the luxuriant image. For his part, Anger explains his methods (his use of a dwarf was to make the gardens look larger) and notes the happy accident that created the effect of the water on the steps. Another 1-minute restoration comparison supplements this title.
The epic of the collection, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954, 38 mins., ***½/****, A/A-/A) features "famous Hollywood recluse" Sampson De Brier in a variety of mythical guises, all of them fond of ingesting jewels and striking poses in the midst of his gaudy, well-appointed home. Anger makes the most of his surroundings by marshalling the boho community (notably self-professed witch Marjorie Cameron as a flame-haired creature with massive eyelashes) to stand majestic before various fabulash backdrops as various mystical camp figures while he superimposes everything from occult symbols to milling extras from something resembling DeMille's silent version of The Ten Commandments. Knowing your classical mythology (and Jewish mysticism) probably helps, but any unfamiliarity shouldn't pre-empt an enjoyment of this delightful swirl of blinding colour and orgiastic pleasure as only Kenneth Anger can provide.
The best-looking film of the bunch both aesthetically and in terms of its preservation, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome's throbbing, saturated hues fairly ooze off the screen and stain your carpet. The mono sound (a recording of a Leos Janacek symphony) is also a high watermark, managing to pack a punch despite an initial need for amplification. Anger's yak-track once again generously pays homage to the participants and sheds light on what, exactly, is being represented by those kitsch-extravagant get-ups–not to mention how much of De Brier's closet was raided for props and sets. Yet another minute-long restoration comparison closes out the platter.
Various; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); DVD-9; Region One; Fantoma
