The Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume One

Kenneth Anger is probably best known as the author of Hollywood Babylon (1981), a notoriously salacious tome about Tinseltown's scandalous side. But since his teen years, he's also been making short films, which have long had a cult following, especially among gay audiences. This single disc includes five of his early efforts, beginning with the 1947 “Fireworks,” a surrealistic black-and-white piece in which the 18-year old Anger himself appears as the victim in a nightmarish vision of gay bashing, and ending with “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” (1954), an almost blindingly flashy experimental exercise involving various figures from mythology and history in colorful garb, with allusions to the occultist theories of Aleister Crowley (which Anger embraced). In addition, the disc includes “Puce Moment” (1949), celebrating splendid dresses from Hollywood movies of the golden age; “Rabbit's Moon” (1950), an expressionistic reinvention of commedia dell'arte conventions performed in near-ballet style by mimes; and “Eaux d'Artifice” (1953), featuring a succession of luminescent shots of a tiny woman dressed in 18th-century garb walking through a baroque-era water garden, where the light plays against the waves. Anger's odd, hallucinatory, esoteric shorts—presented here with excellent digital transfers—will hardly appeal to general viewers, but they've been highly influential on other filmmakers. DVD extras include audio commentary by Anger. A shoe-in for academic cinema studies collections, this is also highly recommended for larger general collections. (F. Swietek)