That's magick! (The Magick Lantern Cycle (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	The Magick Lantern Cycle (DVD)
Date:	10/07/09 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some amazing imagery

Disadvantages: They're 'art films', so will put a lot of people off

This is a two-disk DVD from the BFI, compiling Kenneth Anger's classic short films. It costs £18 on amazon (BFI disks are always expensive).

Kenneth Anger is a legendary underground film-maker. His camp, occult-inflected films are unlike anything else I've seen. Anger's probably most notorious for the book Hollywood Babylon, a catalogue of unpleasant movie star gossip. He's also a long-standing follower of Aleister Crowley. Many of his short films are lost forever, frustratingly including a ten-minute film made in 1955 at Crowley's Abbey of Thelema. Anger also had an affair with Bobby Beausoleil, one of the Manson Family, who features in one of the films. Other 'celebrity' cameos to look out for include Anais Nin, Donald Cammell, Jimmy Page and Anton LaVey.

The films themselves are difficult to describe. Generally gaudily coloured, they have an artificial, ritualistic feel and an amazing, detached visual style. Supposedly sequential scenes feel oddly disconnected from one another. The performers are generally non-professionals, and the films lack synchronised sound, instead using classical or 50s rock n roll soundtracks. The way Anger uses long, still shots; the staginess; the sped-up film; and even the use of colour make a lot of the films feel like early silent cinema, but with an extra layer of knowingness. The later films replace the static tableaux with faster, near-subliminal editing, but they still feel like something outside of time - ancient and otherworldly, camp, pretentious, charming. They're absolutely essential viewing and far more watchable than the majority of underground art films I've seen.

Anger has claimed that they're occult works designed to exert power over an audience. So, uh, approach with caution, I guess.

Fireworks (1947) is a dream-like masochistic gay fantasy made in a weekend when 17-year-old Anger's parents were away from home. Anger plays a young man who dreams of being beaten by a gang of sailors. It's only 15 minutes long. Languid, black and white, and often out of focus, it's a parade of striking images, many of them of involving male torsos. It's surprisingly strong stuff for its time, with some unpleasant gory moments, but it's mostly surreal, with highlights including a guy with a firework for a penis, and a man with a Christmas tree for a head. There's one fantastic visual gag involving a small sculpture, but this is quite sombre - the classical music soundtrack gives it a ritualistic feel.

There are a few fragmentary shorter films from the late 40s and early 50s, where Anger has moved into colour and stopped being quite as upfront about his sexuality. Puce Moment, Rabbit's Moon and Eaux d'Artifice are all short, but are fairly hypnotic. There are some beautiful visual moments (Puce's dancing dresses or Eaux's amazing closeups of fountains). Tinted or coloured like silent films, these feel like artefacts from a lost age.

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) is my favourite Anger film, and at 38 minutes, the longest. It's a peculiar sequence of tableaux in which gifts are offered in a series of occult rituals by people in various esoteric costumes. It's shot in bright, lurid colours and accompanied by a great piece of classical music (by Janacek). Goodness only knows what it all means, but it draws you in completely. This is as hypnotic as anything I've ever seen, and almost replicates the feel of being on hallucinogenic drugs. Camp, sinister and beautiful, it's an astounding film.

Scorpio Rising (1963) is probably Anger's most famous film. It features leather-clad bikers ritualistically preparing for a night on the road, with the main character attending what looks like a gay orgy, taking drugs, and ranting in a church, possibly about Nazism. It's far more fast-paced than usual, with a menacing physicality that's in stark contrast to the earlier works. This is Tom of Finland compared to the Pierre et Giles of Pleasure Dome. This is about the fetishisation of bikers, all leather and chains, James Dean pin-ups and Brando clips. It's accompanied by a non-stop stream of late-50s early-60s pop hits by the likes of Elvis, The Crystals and Bobby Vinton (this must have influenced David Lynch). It uses rapid editing and montage in the second half (it's just under half an hour), mixing in clips from elsewhere including - controversially - scenes from a TV series about Jesus.

Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965) is very short and shows a man polishing a custom-made car. It's shot from lots of nice angles, but it feels a bit too much like Scorpio Rising with the rough edges removed and at three minutes isn't long enough to really get interesting.

Invocation of my Dream Brother (1969) is only ten minutes long and was pieced together from the remains of another film which was lost (stolen by the leading man, Bobby Beausoleil, and apparently buried in the desert). So it's a manic montage of images, including soldiers in Vietnam, footage from a Stones concert, and a creepy looking albino guy. The wobbly camerawork and frenetic editing make this a bit more confrontational than Anger's other films. The repetitive and jarring synth soundtrack (done by Mick Jagger) is also unpleasant. But the campy satanic ritual scenes are pretty funny.

Lucifer Rising (1972) is the last film on here. At almost half an hour it's one of the longest, and is a mixture of images relating to Egyptian creation myths and Crowleyan magick. Parts of it were filmed in Egypt, and it looks a lot more assured and professional than the earlier films. In many ways, though, this makes it a bit less interesting. Although Anger's incredible visual style is maintained, this one is a bit more of its time. The obsessions on display - Egyptology, mysticism, UFOs - place it a lot more firmly in the 60s/70s hippy tradition (as does the presence of Marianne Faithfull in some scenes). Most of the film's shots could easily be prog album covers.

That's not to say it isn't good, but unlike the others it feels like a museum piece, a novelty from the crazy 60s; the earlier films feel a great deal more contemporary. The best thing about the film is the amazing soundtrack, recorded by Beausoleil (in prison for murder at the time; he's still there). The soundtrack really is remarkable, a trippy prog-synth effort that complements the film perfectly while still being worth a listen on its own terms.

What Lucifer Rising feels like more than any of the others is a music video. What must have seemed radical then would probably seem almost normal to a generation used to seeing disjointed imagery accompanied by music. It's difficult to say what, if any, influence someone like Kenneth Anger has had on the mainstream, but a lot of music video directors must have seen his films.

All the films have commentaries from Anger which are a bit disappointing. There's also a ten-minute film of an exhibition of Crowley's art, but the paintings aren't very interesting.

These films won't be to everyone's taste, of course. A lot of people won't like films that don't really try to tell a story or make sense. They do slightly have that feeling a lot of art films have, that they're aimed at someone else, not at me. But I find them accessible and enjoyable in a way that few other films like them are, and feel their rock n roll and occult trappings make them more accessible than you might expect. Come on - decadent gay Satanic art films? What's not to like?

Summary: A great collection of short films