Puce Moment

'Puce Moment (1949)' is, oddly enough, my first film from director Kenneth Anger. As soon as it began, I realised I'd discovered a filmmaker who stood well ahead of his time. Is that folk rock playing on the soundtrack? Surely, I told myself, such a song has no place in a 1949 film – the technique has since become commonplace in movies and music videos. The film's vibrant colour photography clashes uncertainly with the shaky hand-held filming style, suggesting the rising experimental movement of the 1960s. It's peculiar that Anger wasn't even attempting to be "trendy" or "modern" with his film-making style. 'Puce Moment,' originally intended as a feature, was supposed to be emulating the opulent Hollywood lifestyles of the silent era. The film opens with a 1920s movie star (Yvonne Marquis) lavishly searching for a suitable dress from her extensive wardrobe of flapper gowns, before applying perfume, languishing lazily on a chair, and then taking her four dogs for a walk. Strangely, it all barely feels like the 1920s. Does this mean that the film failed in what it was attempting? Maybe, but it's a glorious failure. Anger's condemnation of the movie star's decadent daily routine preempts Billy Wilder's critique in 'Sunset Blvd. (1950),' and his film-making style clearly influenced the experimental cinema of the coming decades. This was my first film from Kenneth Anger, but it certainly won't be my last.

Because of the psychedelic music I didn't believe this was from 1949, but that is probably added a decade or more later. In combination with the pictures it creates a very special experience that I watched over five times (its only six minutes) to let it endure. How the music and the text relates to the images is another thing, its either hippie or pure hedonistic or (strangely) both. What it creates in feeling of reminisce and nostalgia over past times is what makes this so special.

All we see is a diva woman enjoying herself by herself, as a hermit as the music suggests, looking at her garments, smelling her perfumes or out on the terrace with her four greyhounds. She is so self indulgent that she looks high.

This is a small 6 minute fragment of what was supposed to title "Puce Women". It was to be about the types of Hollywood actresses from the 1920s.

It begins with a series of beautiful, colorful gowns being shoved at the camera. They were actual gowns worn by 1920s actresses. It shows a woman (Yvonne Marquis) looking for a gown to go out in. She finally finds one that is puce-colored (hence the title). Then we have her lying on a couch which moves around. Next we see her walking four dogs in the puce gown.

There's no real point or story but it IS beautiful to watch and the gowns especially will be a treat to see in color for any fan of old Hollywood movies. It's an interesting short for fans of old Hollywood movies. I give it a 7.

I don't know if there is too much to this short by Kenneth Anger, but I also don't know if Anger wants us to think there's anything deeper past the facade he presents: a bunch of dresses are shown one by one, floating like ghosts, and then the woman is trying the dresses on, puts on her pointed fashionable shoes, and then is taken along while lying back on a couch through light and dark until she's on a roof.

I wish I knew what the word 'Puce' meant before watching the film (looking it up in French it means 'flea', so is it related to fleas somehow, or a flea circus, I don't know). It doesn't seem to have much to relate to this - maybe because dogs appear near the end who are leading along the woman - but that's fine, I suppose.

I didn't watch this first among the Anger films in his collection, and I think Scorpio Rising, Rabbit's Moon and even the hallucinogenic Lucifer Rising offer more meat on the experimental bones than this. It's also hard to judge it as its own thing as Anger went back to re-dub the original version he shot and he put Jonathan Harper folk songs over it, which... was the wisest decision he made as it turns this into something that is out of time, as it's clothes from the silent film era (via his grandmother who was a designer), an actress and setting and film stock that's late 1940's (in color! and not bad stock at that), and music from the 60's.

This ends up being a keen music video, and of course it shows how vital Anger was with putting images to music. But apart from that it's not something that yells "watch this over and over" (unless, of course, you love the songs beyond measure or the clothes or whatnot). Maybe if Anger had had the money to do what he wanted it'd be something more than these fragments stitched together.

A six-minute fragment of a film designed to be much longer, Puce Moment follows an archetypal silent movie star as she luxuriates through her opulent surroundings. Beautifully shot in color, the film is rich with fabrics, jewelry and antique Hollywood exotica. Excellent original psychedelic movie score added in the 1960s. Echoes of this work may be felt in Anger's later films of the 60s, particularly "Kustom" and the opening sequence of "Scorpio Rising".