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Popeye and the orfink, a moist Pietà-reverie. "Inflammable desires" are the theme, announces Kenneth Anger at the onset, he's the teenaged dreamer bare under the covers and surrounded by objets d'art. (His towering erection is merely a wooden figurine, the first of several classic ithyphallic gags.) The bed is empty and the matchsticks are gone, out he ventures into the inky night of rough trade and painted backgrounds. The big, narcissistic weightlifter has little time for him, it's not easy getting your cigarette lit in the square Forties, a flaming bundle of sticks straight out of the fireplace does the trick in a quintessential Anger pun. Le Sang d'un Poète and Meshes of the Afternoon, but also Spellbound and Anchors Aweigh. The young wanderer all at sea is cornered by hoods in naval togs, the ensuing orgy of chains and broken bottles offers ejaculations of blood and milk—his upside-down visage is just the realm for pain and ecstasy to coincide. Fifteen minutes on 16mm, the queer boy home alone with his abstract and fleshy mythologies, "a temporary release." Lightning and headlights illuminate the nocturnal darkness of the conscious, above all the sparkling Roman candle sprouting from the sailor's crotch. (Beneath slashed entrails lies the Tin Man's clock-heart, cf. Rimbaud's "Le Coeur supplicié.") Fourth of July segues into Christmas, and there's the sublime mutation of the Yule tree bobbing off the top of the protagonist's head. The holiday miracle is a bed finally occupied, the hand sculpture originally missing a finger is now restored and erect. Fassbinder in Querelle gladly perceives it all. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |