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Kenneth Anger Maximilian Le Cain is a filmmaker and cinephile living in Cork City, Ireland. |
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| Offering a description of himself for the program of a 1966 screening,
Kenneth Anger stated his 'lifework' as being Magick and his 'magical weapon'
the cinematograph. A follower of Aleister Crowley's teachings, Anger is
a high level practitioner of occult magic who regards the projection of
his films as ceremonies capable of invoking spiritual forces. Cinema, he
claims, is an evil force. Its point is to exert control over people and
events and his filmmaking is carried out with precisely that intention.
Whatever one's view of this belief may be, what is undeniable is that in creating the nine films that he either managed to complete (Fireworks [1947], Eaux d'artifice [1953], Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome [1954-66], Scorpio Rising [1963], Invocation of My Demon Brother [1969], Lucifer Rising [1970-81]) or else released as self contained fragments (Puce Moment [1949], Rabbit's Moon [1950-79], Kustom Kar Kommandos [1965]), Anger forged a body of work as dazzlingly poetic in its unique visual intensity as it is narratively innovative. In many ways, these wordless films represent the resurgence and development of the uniquely cinematic qualities widely considered retarded or destroyed by the passing of the silent era, especially in the area of editing. According to Tony Rayns, “Anger has an amazing instinctive grasp of all the elements of filmmaking; his films actively work out much of Eisenstein's theoretical writing about the cinema…. [Anger] comes nearer [to Eisenstein's theories] than anything in commercial cinema and produces film-making as rich in resonance as anything of Eisenstein's own.” (1) Anger's films are cinematic manifestations of his occult practices. As such, they are highly symbolical, either featuring characters directly portraying gods, forces and demons (Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Lucifer Rising) or else finding an appropriate embodiment for them in the iconography of contemporary pop culture (Puce Moment, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, also Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome). This view of pop culture as vehicle for ancient archetypes is also the basis of Hollywood Babylon, his famous book about the seedier aspects of Hollywood history. In attempting to induce an altered state of consciousness in his viewers, Anger dispenses with traditional narrative devices, although his films definitely tell stories. Using powerful esoteric images and, especially in his later works, extremely complex editing strategies that frequently feature superimposition and the inclusion of subliminal images running just a few frames, Anger bypasses our rationality and appeals directly to our subconscious mind. The structure common to his major works is that of a ritual invoking or evoking spiritual forces, normally moving from a slow build up, resplendent with fetishistic detail, to a frenzied finale with the forces called forth running wild.
This section of the film is constructed around Shiva greeting each guest, often in a different form, and partaking of what they offer. The movement of the film is essentially the passing of the gifts from one guest to another as they advance into a state of transpersonal ecstasy. Anger's compositions are highly formal and painterly, seducing the viewer with the spectacle of the sumptuous costumes and adopting a colour palette of an aggressively theatrical beauty, reminiscent of Powell's Tales of Hoffmann (1951). The final part of the film is an orgiastic vision of the ritual's consummation, with fast cutting, multiple superimpositions including images of magical symbols and the presence of fire hinting at an apocalyptic destiny for those involved. Even if Anger's films are mute, it would be inaccurate to think of them as silent—his use of music is never less than vitally important and frequently deeply impressive. In this case Janacek's Glagolitic Mass adds to the rapturous imagistic grandeur of Anger's ritual.
The preparations involve the bikers fixing and polishing their motorbikes, donning the 'ceremonial garb' of leather, bedecking themselves with rings and chains like Shiva in Pleasure Dome—the physical aspects of preparation. Psychically, there is the reading of comic books, the adoration of James Dean visible on posters in the protagonist's bedroom, the imitation of Brando who appears on his television in Laslo Benedek's The Wild One (1954) and the snorting of cocaine. The 'ritual' is a homoerotic Halloween party, featuring fancy dress like the gathering in Pleasure Dome, where we witness sodomy, fellatio and all manner of pranks. That this machine-fixated biker gang is a death cult is made obvious by the omnipresence of the skull and cross bones, the adoption of Nazi imagery and the noose that hangs in the hero's bedroom. At the party, a man dances around with a skull on a wand, touching people's heads with it in twisted benediction. The film moves into its third stage when the hero leaves the party to desecrate a church, smashing the altar, installing swastikas and skulls, urinating into his helmet and casting a hex on a diurnal motorbike race that results in an accident. That same night there is also another accident that leaves one of the bikers, presumably the hero, dead.
The use of music in Scorpio Rising is possibly the most influential aspect of Anger's oeuvre. The soundtrack is comprised entirely of a series of pop songs and a few sound effects. The songs not only add to the energy of the visuals but their lyrics form an ironic commentary on them. This prefigured such films as Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973) and American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) that paved the way for wide use of 'found' soundtracks.
His subsequent and latest film to date, Lucifer Rising is a departure from his previous major works. If Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising and Demon Brother remained fixated on death, Lucifer Rising is about rebirth, a celebration of the power of nature and of the ancient gods. It is a film of breathtaking beauty and power that supplants the closed worlds of Pleasure Dome and Scorpio Rising as well as Demon Brother's zone of all-pervading disorientation with an awesome sense of timelessness and spatial immensity, engendered at least in part by having been shot at often sacred sites all over the world. The 'ritual structure' of the previous films is present, but opened up. It now operates on two levels, encompassing the world of the gods as well as the efforts of the adept at summoning them. Linking Egyptian mythology, embodied by Isis (Miriam Gibril) and Osiris (Donald Cammell), with Crowleyan practices, it celebrates Lucifer not as the devil but as lord of light. 'Lucifer' Anger observes 'is the patron saint of the visual arts. Colour, form, all thee are the works of Lucifer.' These 'ritual' structures are also present in some of the less developed works in either a minor or abbreviated form. Puce Moment, a film linked to Pleasure Dome in terms of its visual opulence (and, indeed, shots from it are used in Pleasure Dome's superimpositions), shares the later film's fetishistic act of preparation, in this case a movie star getting dressed to walk her dogs and magically floating out of her house on her bed. Rabbit's Moon retells the story of Harlequin and Pierrot, which fits into Anger's common narrative pattern of a hero who summons up forces that finally harm him. Likewise Eaux d'artifice's ending, in which the heroine seems to turn into water in one of the numerous fountains among which she has been walking, appears to suggest punishment for meddling with natural powers. Kustom Kar Kommandos seems more like a camp send-up of the machine fetish elements of Scorpio Rising than anything else, with a muscular young man polishing a car with a fluffy duster against a pink background in exaggeratedly eroticised compositions to the accompaniment of the Parris Sisters' Dream Lover.
Anger returned to the United States in 1962. After the success of Scorpio Rising he planned the ambitious Kustom Kar Kommandos, abandoned due to lack of funds—the only scene shot comprises the film of that title that we have today. The original and very different version of Lucifer Rising was stolen in 1966, never to be recovered. In 1968 Anger went to London, where he began an association with Mick Jagger. Demon Brother was constructed from remaining footage from the first Lucifer Rising and material shot in London. Since Lucifer Rising, Anger has spent his time pruning, maintaining and preserving his films, adding new soundtracks to several of them. He also travels widely to attend screenings of his work. In rigorously pursuing a vision of the cinema that is as original as it is personal, Anger not only created one of the most consistently thrilling bodies of work in cinema but in so doing highlighted the poverty of imagination that governs so much 'normal' filmmaking and the unconscionable limitations still placed on the medium. Like other geniuses of the American Underground such as Brakhage, Warhol and Markopoulos he has had a certain amount of influence over succeeding generations of filmmakers. But, like them, whatever he has taught others, he will always remain unique, one of the few filmmakers whose work is capable of returning meaning to that much overused word—'visionary'. © Maximilian Le Cain, January 2003 Endnotes:
Filmography Fireworks (1947)Puce Moment (1949) Rabbit's Moon (1950-79) Eaux d'artifice (1953) Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954-66) Scorpio Rising (1963) Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965) Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) Lucifer Rising (1970-81) 
Select Bibliography Kenneth
Anger, Hollywood Babylon, J.J. Pauvert, Paris, 1959 Articles
in Senses of Cinema
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