Kenneth Anger – Page 15 – { feuilleton }

Max Reinhardt’s Dream

In which the great German theatre director goes to Hollywood to show America how to stage Shakespeare. Nearly everyone who was anyone in pre-war German cinema passed through Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin so it seemed natural that he’d gravitate eventually to film himself. The 1935 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was directed by William Dieterle but it’s very much a Reinhardt production, especially in the fantastic opening of Act II where the fairies dance into the moonlit sky on paths of mist accompanied by Mendelssohn’s music. With its blend of music, dance and lavish production design Dieterle’s film gives us some idea of the harmonising artistry at work in Reinhardt’s stage productions.

There are other reasons to recommend this version over later adaptations, not least James Cagney’s performance as Bottom. A fifteen-year-old Mickey Rooney played Puck although he’s frequently more annoying than mischevious. Then there’s the mystery of whether that’s the young Kenneth Anger uncredited in the role of The Changeling Prince. Anger has always claimed it was him (he was a child actor for a while), Anger biographer Bill Landis agrees but plenty of other people have disputed the claim in recent years. The best viewing I had of the sequence in which the Changeling appears was on a big screen in a season of Kenneth Anger’s films in 1990. Whether Anger played the part or not, the charm of Dieterle’s film subtly invests The Magick Lantern Cycle, from the glittering surfaces in Eaux D’Artifice and the artificial forest in Rabbit’s Moon, to the appearance of Mickey Rooney’s Puck on a TV screen in Scorpio Rising. Anger’s later works were productions of Puck Films, their motto “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Ideally the magical opening of Act II would be on YouTube but it seems not. This scene, however, gives an idea of the atmosphere, while Doctor Macro has stills and more information.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Midsummer Chronophage
• Another Midsummer Night
• A Midsummer Night’s Dadd
• William Heath Robinson’s Midsummer Night’s Dream

San Francisco by Anthony Stern

The flip-side of the kitsch London of Smashing Time can be found in this frenetic short made a year later which presents a fragmented view of that other locus of the Paisley Era, San Francisco. Director Anthony Stern avoids the usual longueurs of silent documentary by chopping his footage to bits to create a tour through the city streets that’s as frenzied as the films of Jeff Keen. The bonus is a score by The Pink Floyd (from the days when they still used the definite article) playing an exclusive version of Interstellar Overdrive. That alone makes one wonder why this film hasn’t received more attention over the years.

Stern’s film reminds me of Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), another short work which is frequently as frenzied and also features scenes filmed in San Francisco. In addition, both films feature some ritual business: Stern shows a group of freaks in a psychedelic house with the inevitable naked woman cavorting for the benefit of clothed men; Anger is rather more serious with shots of a full-blown Crowlean ceremony. Anthony Stern today has established himself as a very accomplished glass artist; you can see his glass work here and watch San Francisco here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Smashing Time
• Berlin Horse and Marvo Movie
• Kenneth Anger on DVD again

Symbolist cinema

Symbolist? Arguably. Decadent? Certainly. Watching Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992) again this weekend I thought it worth making note of some of these resonances. The real age of Symbolist cinema was the Silent Era from around 1910 onwards, something I discussed in more detail here. That being so, several films made since can be taken as Symbolist (more usually Decadent) productions even if this was never their original intention. Kenneth Anger‘s Magic Lantern Cycle comes immediately to mind, so too Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.

Bram Stoker’s novel was published in 1897 at the ebbing of the fin de siècle but vampires and vampirism were already recurrent Symbolist themes. Aesthetic magus Walter Pater wrote of the Mona Lisa in 1893, “She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave…” Dracula almost demands a Symbolist interpretation, and for now Coppola’s production is the closest we get. I’ve found this makes the film more satisfying in a way: you can ignore the shoddy performances by secondary characters and concentrate on the decor and details (and the tremendous score by Wojciech Kilar). Some of the following screen grabs argue my point.

Oh look, peacock feathers. I loved the artificiality of this film, the excessive palette, the obvious models and miniatures, the layering of images. The dissolve from a peacock feather to Jonathan Harker’s infernal train journey is a great moment.

Continue reading “Symbolist cinema”

The art of Alia Penner

Kenneth Anger poster (2009).

Alia Penner, like Arik Roper, is another talented member of the omniversal Arthur posse as well as being an illustrator, designer and photographer in her own right. Her title designs opened the Missoni promotional film which Kenneth Anger directed earlier this year, and her work on paper follows a distinctly psychedelic path. The new piece below reminds me a little of Wilfried Sätty’s colour collages with its spots and eggs and butterflies. There’s more gorgeous work to be seen here.

Somewhere (2010).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Arik Roper relaunched
• Wilfried Sätty: Artist of the occult
• Missoni by Kenneth Anger

Missoni by Kenneth Anger

I did have another Ludwig post planned for today but that’s been set aside for a different kind of fabulosity following the news that Kenneth Anger has made a new film. Italian fashion house Missoni commissioned Anger to make a short promo for their Fall/Winter collection and you can see the delirious results in high-resolution here. The film features Missoni family members peering out from among the layered moons and stars while the titles are by Arthur magazine’s Psychedelic Healing Visions Correspondent, Alia Penner.

“I’m fascinated by Kenneth Anger’s use of color and his ability to transform a film into a three-dimensional texture, a fabric of images in movement,” explained Angela Missoni. This is how she introduced her decision to entrust the Missoni F/W 2011 campaign to one of America’s most famous authors and directors of avant-garde cinema.

Anger—a hyperactive octogenarian who loves working in the wee hours of the night and at dawn using sophisticated instruments such as the RED digital camera that has the characteristics of a classic 35 mm camera—flew in from Los Angeles to film the campaign in Sumirago that involved all the members of the great Missoni family. They are the stars of this campaign that was conceived as a series of superimposed and overlapping portraits. (More.)

Via Arthur!

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Anger in London
• Arabesque for Kenneth Anger by Marie Menken
• Edmund Teske
• Kenneth Anger on DVD again
• Mouse Heaven by Kenneth Anger
• The Man We Want to Hang by Kenneth Anger
• Relighting the Magick Lantern
• Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally