Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

I first encountered this work around 1967, in a period when I was seeing many underground films in New York and Los Angeles, some shown in progress by the makers themselves. It was a heady time, and my memory was of a richly textured, opulent work that was surely Anger's magnum opus up to that time.

Last week, more than 3 decades later, I saw it again and was amazed at how inept and self-indulgent it was. The only thing holding it together is the appropriated sound track, Leos Janacek's masterful Glagolitic Mass, a creation that is far older than the film but has retained its genius. The visuals (like all of Anger's work, this is a silent movie with music) are little more than a pretentious thrift-shop costume show aspiring to pageantry, with little detectable underlying meaning or cinematic form.

The notion of camp was not yet formulated in 1954, when IotPD was made, but the film inadvertently exemplifies the concept -- or was Anger really satirizing a self-conscious social circle along with a certain type of dilettantish cluelessness and muddled cinematic thinking when he made this? What a huge disappointment after mistakenly thinking so well of this movie for so many years!

Swallowing jewelry? Drinking potions? A birdcage as head-dress? Kenneth Anger's IOTPD is the trippiest, most gorgeously haunting and sensual of film experiences I have ever seen; trust me, it will leave your mouth gaping in sheer awe. Hallucinogenic, weirdly stagnant and moving at the same time, a head-first dive into Crowley Land, an otherworldly playground of dreams deluged with sensuality and, as the title suggests, pleasure. You can watch it again and again and still never bore of it. Mesmerizing and beautifully filmed. Easily Anger's masterpiece (more so than SCORPIO RISING or LUCIFER RISING), and better than any other dives into "psychedelic psinema" (THE TRIP and the acid montage from EASY RIDER come to mind). There has never EVER been anything like this trippy tour de force of style in the history of the cinema.

Browsing the record for Kenneth Anger I was staggered to see that this masterpiece and Scorpio Rising were languishing in the 6.somethings ratings while the much less impressive Lucifer Rising was in the upper 7s... I can still recall the thrill I had in seeing this film at an 'underground' (literally!) screening in 1968. The colours seared from out of Anger's blackness and the characters have haunted my subconscious ever since. This is the most Crowley-like of Anger's films and all the better for it. There is true magic in his style and imagery.

I have only had the priviledge of seeing three Kenneth Anger films, all picked up as curiosities from the college library. But, this film is staggering in the sensory rampage it inflicts. Deep, primal archetypes are brought to life in a chillingly abstract vision.

Ancient, monumental epics once dominated the silver screen. The silent classics of Griffith and DeMille were smash hits, breaking box office records, and revolutionized film as we know it. these are the types of films that Kenneth anger seems to be recalling with "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome". He mixes the flavor of old silent Hollywood's most influential and magnificent epics with slightly disturbing and discomforting occultist imagery, making this short one Hell (no pun intended) of a weird ride.

It starts off cohesively enough as a wordless examination of some fantastical characters in an Inferno-like setting, made up of loose vignettes and beautiful, eye popping colors and effects; however, things take a turn for the insanely radical by the second half of the film. Soon, Anger seems to have completely lost his mind in the editing room and images are placed onto one another, demons smirk and sinful souls fall and cry in fright, creatures dance, beautiful women delightfully smile while monstrous beings pop from the opposite side of the frame. It's a dense, lyrical work of cinematic poetry that combines beauty with horror in a jaw dropping fashion, unlike almost any other movies being produced in the 1950's. Here's a weird, surrealistic experience that will please anyone that enjoys exploring the deepest depths of underground/avant garde filmmaking- it's a classic of the genre if there ever was one!