Kenneth Anger Films

Tonight’s films from Kenneth Anger were confusing in the sense that they had no plot, and Scorpio Rising was especially difficult to view because of the rapid assembling of different scenes flashing before you. It reminded me of a slideshow rather than my traditional idea of a film.

Fireworks had somewhat of a plot and possibly represented a dream. A sailor was holding a man while lightning flashed, then the scene cut to the man sleeping on his bed. I assume that when he “woke up” he was dreaming, and his dream was about a group of sailors beating him up. Although the movie ends with a scene of him sleeping, confirming my idea that it was a dream, there are parts that lead you to believe it wasn’t. For example, the fireplace is now on fire, presumably from the flaming Christmas tree in the dream, and the hand on his desk is now fixed, when it was broken in the “dream”. On another note, something in the film reminded me of the film we saw in class where the dancer danced into different rooms. At one point in Fireworks, the man was talking to a sailor at what looked like a bar, then in his home next to the fireplace. Unlike the film we saw in class, this was much more abrupt and it was difficult to tell if it was meant to be connected to the previous scene.

Rabbit’s Moon wasn’t much easier to understand, but an interesting idea the lecturer brought up was the debate he had when restoring the film: flip the image or don’t flip the image? Apparently the film was accidentally flipped when Anger transferred it, which caused Lipman to wonder whether or not to flip it back. There were two sides to it: 1) the big dipper would appear correctly if it was flipped or 2) not flipping it may keep what was intended. He decided making two versions, one flipped and one not, which I think was a fair decision.