Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

MOVIE #1,770 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.28.24 🎆ANGER D.F.🎆 The typical Anger bullshit is starting to get ramped up and I am here for it. You could say he’s “back on his bullshit” though because, like previous AND forthcoming entries, this is another film the artist tinkered with here and there for decades, mostly concerning the final soundtrack. I would like to rewatch the original cut which features the 1926 score by Czech composer Leoš Janáček, but the ELO music also slaps. It’s all just more evidence to the fact that Anger was a master of synching preexisting sound with film footage. In some ways, reading about his movies is more interesting than the movies themselves, like this nugget:

Earlier prints of the film had sequences that were meant to be projected on three different screens, an idea inspired in part by Abel Gance's 1927 film Napoléon. The three-screen version was shown at the Brussels World's Fair. Anger subsequently re-edited the film to layer the images. The film (primarily in the second or third version) was often shown in American universities and art galleries during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

I’m not sure if the longer run-times (this is close to 40 minutes) fits this particular brand of avant-garde, but it’s still a fascinating watch.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
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Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is a 38-minute avant-garde short film by Kenneth Anger. It was filmed in December 1953 and completed in 1954. Anger created two other versions of this film in 1966 and the late 1970s. According to him, the film takes the name "pleasure dome" from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's atmospheric 1816 poem Kubla Khan. Anger was inspired to make the film after attending a Halloween party called "Come as your Madness" hosted by artist Renate Druks. The film has gained cult film status. It was released on October 31, 1954.