Fireworks

A young man with a restless libido steps out of a fantasy world into real-life encounters that are both mercilessly brutal and profoundly liberating. Not for film school students to pick apart in class; they'll never understand it that way. This is a shudderingly intimate film that can only be grasped on an instinctual, visceral level. It is essential to be more than a mere voyeur, to empathize with the film's protagonist (a young Anger himself), and enter with him into his very personal homosexual twilight-world of fantasy. An unflinching and daringly honest examination of Anger's own take on the homoerotic myth associated with sailors, which is both surrealistic a la Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou, and exquisitely ethereal, evoking one of Anger's early cinematic heroes, Jean Cocteau (compare this film to the far more subliminal Blood of a Poet for fascinating parallels). It also owes more than a passing nod in the direction of the great Jean Genet. YES it poetically glorifies homosexual violence; it does this in a way which is far less graphic than contemporary films, and if anyone is offended by this "violence" I might venture to suggest that their reaction has more to do with their discomfort with their own darker sexual fantasies, as this film has the power to touch, even open, this very private, very special place in the viewer's soul. It also surprises me, how frequently the humorous elements of the film seem to escape many reviewers.

As the film is now over 50 years old, it does help to recall its historical context: when it was made, almost all gays and lesbians led fiercely closeted lives, and cowered in terror of "entrapment" (a common device employed by police to bust human beings for the "crime" of same-sex acts). For such a film to explode out of this repressive social context makes it "fireworks" indeed! And it is easy to see why the intelligentsia of the day rightly wanted to lionize the young Anger for this astonishing manifesto that comprises his official cinematic debut. Apparently a powerful scene was later edited out, depicting Anger being humiliated by his tormentors on the floor of the urinal. I wish this scene was still intact; nonetheless, even as it stands, this is one of the most powerful, beautiful, knowing films ever made about fantasy, violence, and eroticism. Amazingly, virtually every film subsequently made by Anger sustains this unique power. Kenneth Anger is truly one of the greatest American artists and filmmakers. Sadly the public focus on his Hollywood Babylon books, his controversial beliefs and life have dwarfed appreciation of his monolithic power as a filmmaker. He has influenced scores of successors and it's time to give this great artist his due.

When you see it , it reminds a sort of Querelle by Fassbinder or touch of Tom of Finland. And not only for sailors or for vulnerable young man , for who the borders between dream and reality become fiction but for the state.

But Fireworks is a film of the year 1947. This historical context defines it and makes not easy to see it as cry, manifesto, protest or expression of eccenticity.

It is only a confession about an incident, crafted as a cold - bitter poem about violence, nightmares, terrible experiences and their transfiguration.

The basic gift to viewer - to imagine see it in 1947 atmosphere.

A simple story and a wise crafted portrait of dark reality in precise terms.

Anger's first film was made over the course of a weekend at his family home. His parents were away. He was Seventeen.

The film is a short and immensely effective exploration of sexuality. That the fantasies are of homosexual leaning bears no relevance; it is merely the chosen vehicle for the subject.

The film is fascinated with the violence of sexual submission as well as the fear of it. The narrative seems to take the form of a dream sequence and is laced with astonishingly mature sarcasm and gentle wit. It is by far Anger's greatest film and a landmark of the American avant-garde.

I agree with Jean Cocteau, who said of Fireworks, "This film touches the quick of the soul, which is very rare." I also agree with Anger that Stanley Kubrick copied the volcano motif (an explosive motif related to the titular Fireworks motif) from Anger's other films and that Anger did in fact have copies of Kubrick's video store rental receipts showing that Kubrick had rented Anger's films from a NYC video store at the time Kubrick was putting the volcano motifs in his films. I feel you have to look beyond both the United States and England to find anyone who can truly appreciate Anger's contributions to world cinema.

This film is one of the seminal works of underground cinema and hugely influential on what was to follow - including Jean Genet's 'Un Chant d'Amour' - hallucinatory, surreal. Sheer unalloyed genius. Beautifully luminous black-and-white photography and razor-sharp editing. Made when Anger was a mere twenty years old (he claimed seventeen ... those three years make all the difference), and shot for a few dollars on the family 16mm camera, it remains one of the founding texts of the underground, looking back to Eisenstein's montage theories and forward to the explosion in avant-garde film-making in the '50s and '60s. The greatest living film-maker.