1949, color, 6.5 minutes
Concept, direction, camera, and editing by Kenneth Anger. Music by Jonathan Halper. Filmed in Hollywood. Cast: Yvonne Marquis (Star).
A lavishly colored evocation of the Hollywood now gone, as shown through an afternoon in the milieu of a 1920's film star.
Puce Moment is a fragment form an abandoned film project entitled Puce Woman. The soundtrack used here is the second one: the first was the overture to Verdi's I Villi. The film reflects Anger's concerns with the myths and decline of Hollywood as well as with the ritual of dressing with the movement from the interior to the exterior and with color and sound synchronization. Although it was made in 1949, it is placed in this cycle after Invocation of My Demon Brother, in with light subject matter, and a longer film with a shorter one. As well, the descending movement of the film star at the end of Puce Moment, which is recapitulated and reversed in the ascension of Lilith in the following - and final- film Lucifer Rising, and the featuring of women in these two works make an interesting and successful juxtaposition.
