Puce Moment

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.

'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.

For me, that is Kenneth Anger is less impressive works, as most of Anger's shorts, the folk-rock music added in the 1960s is amazing. However, that short doesn't tell anything subliminal or interesting. That being said, I liked the intro sequence as well as the color palette.

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".

Kenneth Anger is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, and this is a film I've been wanting to watch for quite some time. After watching it, I enjoyed it. Although not as great as other Anger films like "Scorpio Rising", which has become one of my all time favorite films, it is still a great, little, experimental short.

It has no plot, like most of avant garde cinema, but it is a series of images, which, unlike other avant garde films, are all connected, involving the same one character, who, mainly just goes through a bunch of her dresses. Other stuff happens as well, but it is mainly a woman going through her dresses.

What is so good about that? Well, Anger's imagery and style make the film very visually interesting, and the soundtrack helps the film as well. It is ahead of it's time, and a great short film that you should probably have enough time to watch.