Puce Moment (1949) is a 6 min film by Kenneth Anger, about a long-lashed actress from (we presume) the silent movie era, who goes through the morning ritual of dressing herself and putting on makeup before walking her dogs in the Beverley Hills. I love the combination of shimmering colours and patterns, and the gloriously tacky opening title sequence, with the unusual camera speeds, and wonderful psychedelic folk-rock soundtrack performed by Jonathan Halper (the original soundtrack was with Verdi opera music but was re-released with the Halper music in the 1960′s). It purposefully harks back to the 1920′s silent movie era, with the dresses, outfit and location. Apparently, the dresses which appear in the film were owned by Anger’s grandmother, a costume designer in the silent film era. The film was shot in the house of Sampson De Brier, a silent film actor, who also appeared in Anger’s ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’. There’s so much of ‘Puce Moment’ in David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’, and in some ways, Billy Wilder’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950) about the myth and eventual decline of old Hollywood, and the personal accidents that resulted.
