Avant-Garde: Puce Moment (1949, Kenneth Anger)

Puce Moment (1949)
USA, 6 min
Directed by: Kenneth Anger
Written by: Kenneth Anger
Starring: Yvonne Marquis
Puce Moment (1949) is, oddly enough, my first film from director Kenneth Anger. As soon as it began, I realised I'd discovered a filmmaker who stood well ahead of his time. Is that folk rock playing on the soundtrack? Surely, I told myself, such a song has no place in a 1949 film – but the technique has since become commonplace in movies and music videos. The film's vibrant colour photography clashes uncertainly with the shaky hand-held filming style, suggesting the rising experimental movement of the 1960s. It's peculiar that Anger wasn't even attempting to be "trendy" or "modern" with his film-making style. Puce Moment, originally intended as a feature, was supposed to be emulating the opulent Hollywood lifestyles of the silent era. The film opens with a 1920s movie star (Yvonne Marquis) lavishly searching for a suitable dress from her extensive wardrobe of flapper gowns, before applying perfume, languishing lazily on a chair, and then taking her four dogs for a walk. Strangely, it all barely feels like the 1920s. Does this mean that the film failed in what it was attempting? Maybe, but it's a glorious failure. Anger's condemnation of the movie star's decadent daily routine preempts Billy Wilder's critique in Sunset Blvd. (1950), and his film-making style clearly influenced the experimental cinema of the coming decades. This was my first film from Kenneth Anger, but it certainly won't be my last.
6/10

Soviet: A Strange Voice (1949, Ivan Ivanov-Vano)

A Strange Voice (1949)

Soviet Union, 10 min

Directed by: Ivan Ivanov-Vano

Written by: Dmitri Tarasov

I'd previously only been familiar with animator Ivan Ivanov-Vano through this collaborations with Yuriy Norshteyn, but he was quite a prominent figure in the field of Soviet animation, active for nearly sixty years from the 1920s. In fact, he is often affectionately termed the "Patriarch of Soviet animation." A Strange Voice (1949) is a breathtakingly beautiful example of the master's craft, despite serving propagandistic purposes. By the 1940s, Soviet artists at Soyuzmultfilm studio had been influenced considerably by the American work of Walt Disney, and thus their animation has a quiet, realistic style that is far removed from the more unique (and, by then, obsolete) cartoon designs that had originated in the Soviet Union {see Bazaar (1934), and you'll know what I mean}. Given the degree to which Soyuzmultfilm owed its new style to American animators, it's rather ironic that this particular cartoon condemns the work of foreign artists, albeit in the guise of a pleasant and amusing cartoon made to appeal to Russian youngsters.

A Strange Voice opens in the pristine Russian wilderness, where a nightingale regales the other birds with his beautiful whistling song. Then a stranger arrives in the midst. A black-and-white crow awkwardly alights on a branch and denounces the nightingale's performance as being outdated. She proposes to give a concert of her own singing voice, and the Russian birds politely accept the offer. But when the crow opens her mouth, there is no beautiful singing voice, but only the grating honk of a trumpet. Apparently, this cartoon has American jazz in its sights, and the Russians are to have no part in this grotesque new brand of music. The crow is unceremoniously whistled and then pecked off the stage, and the humble nightingale is able to continue its pleasant song. Providing you look past the propaganda, this ten-minute short is beautifully animated, with a nice musical soundtrack. And, for the record, I happen to like jazz.

8/10