The Complete Magick Lantern Cycle (review)

In the space of a few key works, Kenneth Anger rapidly incorporated the poetics of early European and American silent and avant-garde cinemas into an intensely mystical, openly homosexual, and totally unique style. Not only did his films break down cultural and artistic taboos, they were also expert, pristine works of great beauty and power, created from generally low-budget, independent production circumstances. More than any other American avant-gardist of his generation, Anger easily transcended charges of experimental amateurism. His works have inspired generations of future filmmakers, both experimental (e.g., Matthew Barney) and commercial (e.g., Martin Scorsese), and his visual combination of high and low camp prefigures many contemporary trends in art and fashion.

For these reasons alone, a complete set of the films of Kenneth Anger might be, for a scholar of the avant-garde, as cherished a commodity as the culture industry could muster. The Complete Magick Lantern Cycle from the BFI now houses the film works of Anger on a single Blu-ray disk, alongside plentiful supplementary materials. Included are Fireworks (1947), the classic, Cocteau-inspired dream of violence and desire; Scorpio Rising (1964), the controversially homoerotic pseudo-documentary of biker culture; Eaux d'artifice (1953), the trance-inducing visual poem of the Villa d'Este fountains that verges on structuralist abstraction; Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), the voluptuary parade of old-fashioned Hollywood decadence so striking in its color and décor; and Lucifer Rising (1981), the final Rolling Stones-financed masterwork, in which Anger stages on a grand scale the esoteric rituals and rites of timeless mystical beings. The cycle also includes the beautiful and provocative fragmentary or post hoc constructed films Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), Rabbit's Moon (versions 1 and 2, 1972 and 1979), and Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969). As presented, the films are all Anger's preferred versions.

Although these films have been available on various formats in the past, the Blu-ray presentation of this cycle not only represents the most thorough retrospective of the artist's work yet available but also argues for the emergent format as a prime reference-quality viewing medium. Until now, Anger's films were best viewed on 16mm. The so-called experimental film tradition lays claim to a unique artistic status more frequently, and perhaps more legitimately, than any other mode of cinema. As part of this consecration, the distribution and exhibition of these celluloid works has continued to uphold respect for the projected film itself as the final artwork. Though it increasingly seems that every surviving filmic artifact of note has been digitized and distributed via one new format or another, it is unsurprising that many important classics of the avant-garde remain more difficult to see than the vast majority of commercial films, unless one has regular access to such specialized venues as the Anthology Film Archives. New, digital means of reproduction, archivization, and transmission are continually being explored to adapt the traditional distribution methods of experimental cinema to the needs of the programmers, teachers, and students of the experimental film tradition today. Yet the experience of viewing digital video, whether projected or viewed on a monitor, remains fundamentally different from the experience of viewing projected film.

Anger's films represent a case in point. As Carel Rowe adroitly summarizes this body of work, "all of [Anger's] films have been evocations or invocations, attempting to conjure primal forces which, once visually released, are designed to have the effect of 'casting a spell' on the audience. The Magick in the film is related to the Magickal effect of the film on the audience."¹ But these evocations and invocations rely on more than just Anger's unique concatenation of sound and image—they rely on a nearly total mystification of the cinematic process and experience. For this effect to work, the illusion must not be broken. Therefore chief among Anger's conceits is the notion that the "magick lantern" is the cinematic experience.

Indeed, Anger's films engage...