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Fireworks (1947)

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21 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Ineffable Anger, 4 December 2003

Author: Euterpe_Jones

A young man with a restless libido steps out of a fantasy world into real-life encounters that are both mercilessly brutal and profoundly liberating. Not for film school students to pick apart in class; they'll never understand it that way. This is a shudderingly intimate film that can only be grasped on an instinctual, visceral level. It is essential to be more than a mere voyeur, to empathize with the film's protagonist (a young Anger himself), and enter with him into his very personal homosexual twilight-world of fantasy. An unflinching and daringly honest examination of Anger's own take on the homoerotic myth associated with sailors, which is both surrealistic a la Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou, and exquisitely ethereal, evoking one of Anger's early cinematic heroes, Jean Cocteau (compare this film to the far more subliminal Blood of a Poet for fascinating parallels). It also owes more than a passing nod in the direction of the great Jean Genet. YES it poetically glorifies homosexual violence; it does this in a way which is far less graphic than contemporary films, and if anyone is offended by this "violence" I might venture to suggest that their reaction has more to do with their discomfort with their own darker sexual fantasies, as this film has the power to touch, even open, this very private, very special place in the viewer's soul. It also surprises me, how frequently the humorous elements of the film seem to escape many reviewers.

As the film is now over 50 years old, it does help to recall its historical context: when it was made, almost all gays and lesbians led fiercely closeted lives, and cowered in terror of "entrapment" (a common device employed by police to bust human beings for the "crime" of same-sex acts). For such a film to explode out of this repressive social context makes it "fireworks" indeed! And it is easy to see why the intelligentsia of the day rightly wanted to lionize the young Anger for this astonishing manifesto that comprises his official cinematic debut. Apparently a powerful scene was later edited out, depicting Anger being humiliated by his tormentors on the floor of the urinal. I wish this scene was still intact; nonetheless, even as it stands, this is one of the most powerful, beautiful, knowing films ever made about fantasy, violence, and eroticism. Amazingly, virtually every film subsequently made by Anger sustains this unique power. Kenneth Anger is truly one of the greatest American artists and filmmakers. Sadly the public focus on his Hollywood Babylon books, his controversial beliefs and life have dwarfed appreciation of his monolithic power as a filmmaker. He has influenced scores of successors and it's time to give this great artist his due.

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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
A landmark of the American avant-garde., 31 August 2005

Author: lynchingsamsa from United Kingdom

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.

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Violent and disturbing dream-movie, 7 June 1999
Author: Bz-3 from Southend, England

'Fireworks' is a violent and disturbing manifesto, a short experimental dream-movie that throws in a couple of images that are real eye-openers, and enough homoerotic weirdness to keep those eyes open. What it 'means' of course is anyone's guess. Anger 'awakes' from troubled sleep, and wanders out to get a light for his cigarette, finding instead only torture at the hands of a bunch of muscle-bound sailors. The title refers, at least superficially, to a particularly jaw-dropping episode of sexual imagery, though as with much of what goes on in the film, there are probably any number of magical and sexual allusions that are tied in with it. Beyond a handful of frames that are burned into my memory, quite possibly until the end of time, I'm not sure what there is to take away from the film when you leave- possibly it has something to say about the all-consuming power of violence, but really that's just a shot in the dark. But of course one could argue that a handful of jaw-dropping frames is enough to justify any film. The fingers- in- nostrils scene is a real wow...

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
See it, see it twice, 1 February 2007

Author: Polaris_DiB from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

It's taken me a while as a surveyor and consumer of avant-garde films to come up with a decent way to be able to tell if a particular film is actually successful or just artsy and pretentious, but I've discovered that a very good rule-of-thumb is based around how well the film holds up during a second viewing.

I have been waiting a very long time for an opportunity to view Kenneth Anger's work and eagerly ordered Fantoma's first volume, and I'm glad to see that he's already living up to my expectations. He didn't at first, though. "Fireworks" started off with what felt like enough random instances and cuts to make the typical "dreamworld" pay-off. The violence in the later half and the end really intrigued me, but it felt too late in coming.

Seeing it again, however, there's a lot of recurring imagery that helps fit it together, including the broken cast hand and the "Angry Jesus". In fact, this movie is a very disturbing and brooding outlook into masculinity, one that has a stronger rise too it than it initially seems. Kenneth Anger's character seems to be dealing with a general feeling of emasculation (a feeling Anger attributes to the contemporary Zoot Suit Riots) and anxiety around his sexuality... one that at some points is vaguely homo-erotic, but seem to be about ideas of masculinity in general. I think this reading of this movie is particularly telling by the way Professor Kinsey of sexual research fame was the first to buy a print of the short after its first showing.

I think the best thing about this short is the shot of the still photographs burning in the fire. They strike me as a victim's way of trying to block out bad memories by purging, and Anger mentions of them that they are "the slow fading away of memories of dreams." Either way they are a liberating denouement to the earlier scenes of extreme violence (which were actually very well done as well) and help hold the film together very well.

--PolarisDiB

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
A young man enters a dream state and goes out into the night to meet his desires., 20 June 2006
Author: anthony-432 from United Kingdom

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.

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An essential piece of experimental film, 14 February 2008

Author: Alex P. from Baltimore, Maryland

Kenneth Anger made FIREWORKS in 1947 when he was only 20 years old. From a considerably early age, we can really see his brilliance in avant-garde film making. Anger has always had a real talent in creating surreal imagery mixed in with his own fantasy.

FIREWORKS is based on a real dream that Anger had when he was 17 years old. Here he plays a dreamer who has homosexual fantasies and then he gets raped and tortured by a bunch of sailors. The film is not filmed with any sound or dialog, but there are several sexual allusions throughout. The entire length of FIREWORKS is only 15 minutes, but it feels like it covers an entire feature length story.

If anything, FIREWORKS is a real anti-mainstream film, which is something that Kenneth Anger is very good at making. There are several homosexual themes throughout, which would've been way too controversial for 1947. It is also a very violent film, but the violence and blood in the film is an early example of stylized violence. And even in the violent scenes, there is great symbolism, though it may require multiple viewings to understand. In summary, FIREWORKS is a must see for anyone interested in the underground.

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3 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
I agree with Cocteau, 5 May 2002
Author: mike0323 from Los Angeles, California USA

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.

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2 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
A success, 18 December 2006

Author: gothicgoblin1334 from Paris, France

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.

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2 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
Boring, stupid, violent, 19 October 2000

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

Thank God this film was short! It's something about a young guy (played by director Anger), picking up sailors, bringing them home, getting beaten up. The homoerotic imagery was nothing much (and I'm gay) and the film gets very bloody and brutal. I suppose there's a point to all this but it escaped me! For those of you who like imagery, you'll probably like this. But you have to deal with violence, someone being torn open, a nonexistent plot, lousy acting and (as I said before) real lame homoerotic imagery. It was only about 20 minutes, but I felt like it took 20 YEARS! A must miss!

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3 out of 38 people found the following comment useful :-
There can't be much debate about why Kenneth Anger never became a famous filmmaker., 19 February 2002

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

Granted, Fireworks is not the kind of movie that is going to lead to a very promising filmmaking career. In fact, it's more likely to END a promising filmmaking career than anything else. It is a perversely brutal depiction of the attack and rape of a young man, played by Anger himself, but you have to take Anger's purpose into account when you watch and judge this film.

At a mere 15-20 minute running time, it is not entirely doubtful that Anger may not have made the film for profit at all, but possibly for his own sexual gratification. The question that remains, it seems, is whether he meant to derive that satisfaction during its making or during its viewing. Either way, it is clear that the film's distribution pertains much more to the latter and, assuming that Anger realized this, it can also be assumed that he did not have the hugest aspirations for tremendous commercial success for Fireworks.

One of the first things that you learn in the study of Gay and Lesbian film is that films pertaining exclusively to the homosexual community generally do not have much commercial success, if only because of the relatively small size of its target audience. Even under those circumstances, however, I have to admit that I don't feel that the film would have had much of a chance even if it was directed at a more general audience. It is a hugely uncomfortable and un-enjoyable cinematic experience to a much greater extent even than films that are purposely meant to be unattractive and ugly, like Buffalo '66.

I spent about the first minute of Fireworks waiting to see something that would justify the fact that I was watching it at a screening for a film class at the University level, and then I spent about the next 19 minutes or so waiting for it to end. I did not enjoy a second of the film, but it is clear that there is a message to be derived from it, maybe about the plight of the young homosexual male in the late 40s or the fact that men get raped, too (although, of course, also be men). In any case, the films of Kenneth Anger seem to have been relegated mainly to below even the status of bottom shelf oblivion, and quite frankly, I can't say so far that it's any huge loss.

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