Kenneth Anger, the gay director who caused a scandal with «Hollywood Babylon» dies - Corriere.it

Strange fate that of Kenneth Anger, who died last May 11 at the age of 96 (he was born February 3, 1930 in Santa Monica, California) and together virtually unique destiny: having been a director more read than seen, at least by the general public. The paradox can be explained because his works, cornerstones of the US undergroundhave had a limited and sometimes contested circulation (due to the barbs of censorship), while the two books he wrote on Hollywood and the scandals he witnessed have become a kind of handbook for every curious cinephile.

First published in France in 1959 and translated into Italian the following year (with a second volume released in 1984 and arriving in Italy two years later), "Hollywood Babylon" it is in fact one of those books (which inspired the film "Babylon" by Damien Chazelle, released last January) that once started never leave each other, «as legendary as what it talks about» to use Susan Sontag's definition, because it is capable of mixing the reconstruction of scandals, gossip, suicides, loves and Hollywood perversities with an avowed love for the glamor of the cinema mecca: . Thus capable of exalting the mythological strength of the seventh art while seeming to question it. A "ambiguity" which can also be found in his works, at least in what their author wanted (or was able) to keep and where the imaginative freedom of underground cinema (combined with the director's fascination for esotericism and astrology) are intertwined with the very "Hollywood" pleasure for kitschy colors they pop combinations.

Introduced to the entertainment world by a costume designer grandmother, who appeared at the age of five in Max Reinhardt's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Kenneth Anger signs at seventeen "Fireworks"where his own homosexual fantasies (in the film the director-actor dreams of leaving home and boarding some sailors) serve him to destroy the myths of American culture, starting with the 4th of July fireworks and the Christmas tree, with a montage that earned him compliments from Ejzenštejn and Cocteau and with airony who certainly doesn't care about good taste (a homo version of Michelangelo's Pietà with a sailor instead of the Virgin, a lit stick of dynamite sticking out of the zipper of his trousers).

Moved to Europemade some films left unfinished or lost (including a version of «Histoire d'O» and an adaptation of Lautréamont's poems) but finished the 12 minutes of «Eau d'artifice» (1953) filmed among the fountains of the Villa di Tivoli. The charm of magical-alchemical theories e the influence of the occultist Aleister Crowley strongly marked the imagination of Anger, who returned to America and began working on a series of works destined to compose a personal "Magick Lantern Cycle: an Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" (1956, then modified on the occasion of subsequent screenings) centered on a masked bacchanal involving various mythological figures, followed by the best known of his films, "Scorpio Rising" (1964), where the daily rituals of a group of bikers lead the viewer through the subcultures and iconography of bikers.

In the next «Invocation of My Demon Brother» (1969), magical rituals and images of the Vietnam War are mixed to the rhythm of an electronic loop signed by Mick Jagger while in «Lucifer Rising» (1972) the fascination with the demonic element takes the form of a long invocation to Lucifer, considered the bringer of light and the initiator of a new era (not surprisingly interpreted alongside Marianne Faithfull and Anger himself also, before ending up in prison, by a member of Manson's cult, Bobby Beausoleil). If these quick hints can give the impression of works that are somewhat linear in their structure, watching the films erases any possible simplicity in their complex and sometimes confused mix of visual juxtapositions, superimpositions, subliminal montages (where there is no lack of hard elements), ironic glimpses and iconoclast attacks.

But this is it the real strength of Kenneth Anger's cinema, that of a freedom that seems capable of subverting at each shot the codified rules of cinema but at the same time to invent a new (although often decidedly cryptic) way of expressing oneself and which will affect directors like David Lynch and Martin Scorsese. At least until Crowley's age and confused spiritualistic influences dulled his creativity, prompting Anger in the 2000s to shoot uninteresting works, sometimes even on commission.