L'Ange (The Angel)


Rental Format(s): 16mm film / Digital File - DCP
Sale Format(s): Blu-Ray Disc

During the seventy minutes of The Angel, viewers see a series of distinct sequences arranged upward along a staircase that seems more mythic than literal. Each of the sequences has its own mood and type of action. Early in the film, a fencer thrusts, over and over, at a doll hanging from the ceiling of a bare room. At first, he is seen in the room at the end of a narrow hallway off the staircase, and later from within the room. He fences, sits in a chair, fences - his movements filmed with a technique that lies somewhere between live action and still photographs. At times, Bokanowski's imagery is reminiscent of Etienne-Jules Marey's chronophotographs. Further up the stairs, we find ourselves in a room where a maid brings a jug of milk to a man without hands, over and over. Still later, we are in a room where there seems to be a movie projector pointing at us. Then, in a sequence reminiscent of Méliés and early Chaplin, a man frolics in a bathtub, and in a subsequent sequence gets up, dresses in reverse motion, and leaves for work. The film's most elaborate sequence takes place in a library in which nine identical librarians work busily in choreographed, slightly fast motion. When the librarians leave work, they are seen in extreme long shot, running in what appears to be a two-dimensional space, ultimately toward a naked woman trapped in a box, which they enter with a battering ram. Then, back in the room with the projector, we are presented with an artist and model in a composition that, at first, declares itself two-dimensional until the artist and model move, revealing that this "obviously" flat space is fact three-dimensional. Finally, a visually stunning passage of projected light reflecting off a series of mirrors introduces The Angel's final sequence, of beings on a huge staircase filmed from below; the beings seem to be ascending toward some higher realm. Bokanowski's consistently distinctive visuals are accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Michèle Bokanowski, Patrick Bokanowski's wife and collaborator. Like Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Bokanowski's The Angel creates a world that is visually quite distinct from what we consider "reality," while providing a wide range of implicit references to it and to the history of representing those levels of reality that lie beneath and beyond the conventional surfaces of things.

***This BluRay/DVD PAL Interzone boxset contains the first feature film by Patrick Bokanowski as well as 3 documentaries about Patrick and Michèle Bokanowski, as well as a booklet of 47 pages.***

Rental Fees

  Fee  
16mm film $325.00  
Digital File - DCP $325.00  

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Blu-Ray Disc $65.00 $300.00

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