Puce Moment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Puce Moment is a short 6-minute film by Kenneth Anger. Filmed in 1949, Puce Moment resulted from the unfinished short film Puce Women. The film opens with a camera watching 1920s-style flapper gowns being taken off a dress rack. The dresses are removed and danced off the rack to music. A long-lashed woman, Yvonne Marquis, dresses in the purple puce gown and walks to her vanity to apply perfume. She lies on a chaise longue which then begins to move around the room and eventually out to a patio. Borzois appear and she prepares to take them for a walk.
Production
The original soundtrack was Verdi opera music; in the 1960s, Anger re-released the film with a new psychedelic folk-rock soundtrack performed by Jonathan Halper.
The gowns used were owned by Anger's grandmother, who had been a costume designer in the silent film era. The film was made in the house of Sampson De Brier, a silent film actor, who later appeared in Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954).
Anger attempts to recreate silent era style by using alternating camera speeds. Curtis Harrington was a cinematographer on the film.
Yvonne Marquis, who was Anger's cousin, moved to Mexico shortly after the film was made. Anger claims Marquis was a mistress to Lázaro Cárdenas, the Former President of Mexico.
