When the movie babylon hit the screen last year, Damien Chazelle’s portrait, both gloomy and sulphurous, of Hollywood there was reminiscent of the aptly titled Hollywood Babylon, a notorious work by Kenneth Anger. Pioneer of gay and avant-garde cinema, Anger died on May 11 at the age of 96, but his death was not announced until Wednesday. One of the first openly gay American directors when it was still illegal, he was sued for obscenity because of his film Fireworks. His experimental style imbued with irreverence and surrealism inspired both John Waters and David Lynch.
Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese were also admirers: in 2003, together with Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Redford, they contributed financially to the preservation of Kenneth Anger’s cinematographic rants.
Unclassifiable, his cinema was nonetheless immediately recognizable.
On the Dazed site, Kenneth Anger summarized in 2011: “I liked Cocteau’s films and certain experimental films by Buñuel, and I just wanted to do some home movies in that vein. I call them ‘cine-poems’ — they are not narrative films, but rather stories told with images. »
With a mixture of self-mockery and acuity, in 2014 he confided to the filmmaker Harmony Korine, during an interview for the magazine Interview “My dreams are big-budget, and my films are low-budget. »
A radical film
Born in 1927 in Santa Monica, California, into a comfortable middle-class home, Kenneth Anger spent his time in movies when the Great Depression hit. His maternal grandmother encouraged him in this direction.
At age 10, he salvaged leftover 16mm film and shot his first amateur film. Then a second, at 14, and so on, between childish chronicle and science fiction pastiche with homemade special effects (debuts like those of Spielberg).
In 1944, the family moved to Hollywood, where Kenneth Anger graduated from high school. Shortly after, he was arrested by the police in connection with a “gay trap”. Later, he enrolled in film at USC (University of Southern California).
Shot in 1947, his short film Fireworks is meant to be an exploration of his homosexual desires. Screened in public in 1948, the film earned him being dragged into court, where the charge of obscenity was dismissed: Fireworks is considered artistic, not pornographic.
At publication Movie QuarterlyTodd Haynes, whose first film, Poisonis very influenced by the work of Kenneth Anger, recalls about Fireworks : ” Amazing. His parents are gone for the weekend, and with his friends, he shoots this radical, homoerotic, crazy, and so beautiful film. […] Then this film travels to Europe and Genet and Cocteau and all these guys are shown this film of an American teenager. Quite remarkable. »
The film is further noticed by Alfred Kinsey, himself at the forefront of his profession. Not only will Kenneth Anger participate in the research of the brilliant sexologist, but he will form an unfailing friendship with him.
The Babylonian manna
After European wanderings, penniless, Kenneth Anger begins writing the book that will provide most of his livelihood in the future: Hollywood Babylon, a scabrous, gossip-like account of the splendours and miseries of Tinseltown. Published in 1965, the book is denounced as being largely fictional, but the success is there.
Other works are emerging, including Suicide in the Entertainment Industry and a sequel to Hollywood Babylon.
Kenneth Anger is not uninterested in directing, far from it. In fact, he will never really stop assembling his “cine-poems” thanks, by his own admission, to the support of patrons. Some of his notable films include Waterworks, Rabbit’s Moonand especially Scorpio Risingwhich combines biker fetishism and anticlerical discourse. Scorpio Rising worth to its author to be prosecuted again for obscenity: this time, Anger will only be acquitted on appeal.
Passionate about painting and occult science, his main influences were George Méliès, Maya Deren and Jean Cocteau, the latter a friend and an avowed admirer. Because the cinematographic work of Kenneth Anger may well have remained resolutely underground, she has ardent — and eminent — admirers. Hence its importance, and hence its durability. Small budgets or not.