Fireworks (1947)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Good idea lost in the noise

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

In Kenneth Anger's first masterpiece, "Fireworks" chronicles the senseless irony of homosexuality and violence as well as the longing for love. Here we see depicted as the plot even calls, "the very rape and torture of Anger himself", and Anger here being metaphor to describe all feelings related to love-leading to anger. For some, it would be considered 'wrong' or 'stupdi' but to others who understand the masterpiece clearly understand the beauty of underground cinema. This is one of these films to prove how brilliant avant-garde Anger truly is. In two thousand years, people will find this film, appreciate, love it, and embrace the darkness of one man (and legacy's) soul for many years to come.

This film is one of the seminal works of underground cinema and hugely influential on what was to follow - including Jean Genet's 'Un Chant d'Amour' - hallucinatory, surreal. Sheer unalloyed genius. Beautifully luminous black-and-white photography and razor-sharp editing. Made when Anger was a mere twenty years old (he claimed seventeen ... those three years make all the difference), and shot for a few dollars on the family 16mm camera, it remains one of the founding texts of the underground, looking back to Eisenstein's montage theories and forward to the explosion in avant-garde film-making in the '50s and '60s. The greatest living film-maker.

Anger's first film was made over the course of a weekend at his family home. His parents were away. He was Seventeen.The film is a short and immensely effective exploration of sexuality. That the fantasies are of homosexual leaning bears no relevance; it is merely the chosen vehicle for the subject.The film is fascinated with the violence of sexual submission as well as the fear of it. The narrative seems to take the form of a dream sequence and is laced with astonishingly mature sarcasm and gentle wit. It is by far Anger's greatest film and a landmark of the American avant-garde.

I agree with Jean Cocteau, who said of Fireworks, "This film touches the quick of the soul, which is very rare." I also agree with Anger that Stanley Kubrick copied the volcano motif (an explosive motif related to the titular Fireworks motif) from Anger's other films and that Anger did in fact have copies of Kubrick's video store rental receipts showing that Kubrick had rented Anger's films from a NYC video store at the time Kubrick was putting the volcano motifs in his films. I feel you have to look beyond both the United States and England to find anyone who can truly appreciate Anger's contributions to world cinema.