Eaux d'artifice

The title of Kenneth Anger’s film, Eaux d’artifice, is a play on the French term for fireworks, feux d’artifice (also the title of a film made by Anger in 1947). Instead of exploding sparks, this film represents the glittering water torrents of the Renaissance fountain garden at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy. The film’s action is limited to the nighttime wanderings of a woman dressed in eighteenth-century clothes as she makes her way along the terraces and stairs of the vast garden. At the climax of the film, the woman is consumed by a cataclysm of water. The soundtrack accompanying this symbolic journey is the “Winter” movement of Vivaldi’s violin concerti The Four Seasons.