Eaux d'artifice

I saw this on a fairly large screen as part of a MOCA exhibit in Los Angeles. I probably watched it four or five times that day. It is one of the most stunning films I have ever seen. It's breathtaking.

Sadly, every time I've seen it since, it doesn't sync quite right with the video format. You have to see it as a film projection (or find a source that gets around the mis-sync). Well worth it if you can!!!

We are treated to close up after close up of the Tivoli fountains. A woman in a long dress and feathers walks or runs through the scenery. The images are beautiful and Vivaldi's Four Seasons "Winter" is always worth the wait. The problem is that the images are presented over and over again and at some point the mind begins to wander. It's an apt effort but just never seems to end. Could have occasionally used a different point of view to break things up.

Beautiful! Kenneth Anger's obscure filmography is chock full of artistic masterpieces, and "Eaux d'artifice" is among his very best work! Unlike many other Anger films, "Eaux d'artifice" is not provocative, explicit, or disturbing, instead it is a gorgeous, magical short focusing on the majesty of water. The fountains featured in the film flow with grace, water moves majestically through nearly every shot, images dissolve in and out of one another in a uniquely constructed, breathtaking way. This film will likely have fans of experimental art and imagery speechless, gleefully bathing in Anger's adventurous imagination. An avant garde classic this one is, and for good reason!

A stunning water garden is the empyrean setting for this short film, one of the director's strongest works. The ceaseless motion of liquid in an elaborate fountain-system is given close study in high-contrast black and white...jets, streams and droplets dance madly to classical music as the water becomes seemingly enlivened with a zoetic personality. The mood shifts with the music's dramatic rise-and-fall, being somber and wintry one moment, majestic and powerful the next. Intermittently, a shadowy figure in period costume moves hurriedly through the scenery, adding even further mystique to the proceedings.

Variably similar to Ralph Steiner's groundbreaking 1929 short H2O, and equally mesmerizing in its simple organic beauty, this film is a small masterwork. 9/10.

Somewhat atypical of Anger's films, this seems to be a pure visual treat with none of his trademark homoeroticism or occult references. To a soundtrack of "The Four Seasons", a woman wearing eighteenth century clothes wanders through a garden carrying a fan, until she comes across a fountain. She enters the waters, and fades to nothingness. Anger's camerawork is nothing less than sensational, catching the play of light on the water superbly. This short film was shot in b&w, and printed with a coloured tint, with the fan hand-tinted in a separate colour. Simple, and beautifully effective.