Eaux d'artifice (1953)
A woman dressed elegantly walks purposely through the water gardens at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, as the music of Vivaldi's Winter movement of The Four Seasons plays. Heavy red filters give a blue cast to the light; water plays across stone, and fountains send it into the air. No words are spoken. Baroque statuary and the sensuous flow of water are back lit. Anger calls it water games.
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recommended
not as good as all the hype
disgusting, overrated, pointless
The first must-see film of the year.
Beautiful! Kenneth Anger's obscure filmography is chock full of artistic masterpieces, and "Eaux d'artifice" is among his very best work! Unlike many other Anger films, "Eaux d'artifice" is not provocative, explicit, or disturbing, instead it is a gorgeous, magical short focusing on the majesty of water. The fountains featured in the film flow with grace, water moves majestically through nearly every shot, images dissolve in and out of one another in a uniquely constructed, breathtaking way. This film will likely have fans of experimental art and imagery speechless, gleefully bathing in Anger's adventurous imagination. An avant garde classic this one is, and for good reason!
So far as I've seen, Kenneth Anger has kept mainly to stage-like productions of silent films with a lot of art concepts that appeal to me. This one is so far the one I like the most. Anger shoots in blue-tinted black and white again, this time in a water-sculpture park in Italy.Eaux D'Artifice, Anger explains, is a pun on "Feux D'Artifice" which means "firework." Most of the shots in this film deal predominantly with light as it refracts through the water, in many cases making images that are very resemblant to fireworks. Eaux D'Artifice could also in a way mean "Water Sculpture", which is often what Anger builds this film around.Anger's choice of a protagonist was a very good one. Her size does indeed make the park look bigger and more fantastic, and I think this is Anger's most effective creation of imaginary and dreamlike realms. This movie is very reminiscent of fantasy book covers and paintings that seem to somehow attract many people by a sense of serene mysticism and magical perplexity. Somehow this film reaches to an internal need for magic and alternate worlds, which I feel is very related to our obsession with dreams.--PolarisDiB
A stunning water garden is the empyrean setting for this short film, one of the director's strongest works. The ceaseless motion of liquid in an elaborate fountain-system is given close study in high-contrast black and white...jets, streams and droplets dance madly to classical music as the water becomes seemingly enlivened with a zoetic personality. The mood shifts with the music's dramatic rise-and-fall, being somber and wintry one moment, majestic and powerful the next. Intermittently, a shadowy figure in period costume moves hurriedly through the scenery, adding even further mystique to the proceedings. Mesmerizing in its organic beauty...a small masterwork. 9/10
Somewhat atypical of Anger's films, this seems to be a pure visual treat with none of his trademark homoeroticism or occult references. To a soundtrack of "The Four Seasons", a woman wearing eighteenth century clothes wanders through a garden carrying a fan, until she comes across a fountain. She enters the waters, and fades to nothingness. Anger's camerawork is nothing less than sensational, catching the play of light on the water superbly. This short film was shot in b&w, and printed with a coloured tint, with the fan hand-tinted in a separate colour. Simple, and beautifully effective.