{"id":21887,"date":"2022-07-27T16:26:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T15:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=21887"},"modified":"2022-07-27T16:26:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T15:26:53","slug":"the-liberation-of-mannique-mechanique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2022\/07\/27\/the-liberation-of-mannique-mechanique\/","title":{"rendered":"The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lmm1-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lmm1.jpg\" alt=\"lmm1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Steven Arnold&#8217;s first film is a 14-minute fantasia made four years before his debut feature, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2022\/06\/13\/luminous-procuress\/\"><em>Luminous Procuress<\/em><\/a> (1971). Like many underground films, <em>The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique<\/em> is essentially a home movie in which the director&#8217;s friends have been encouraged to perform for the camera, but Arnold&#8217;s creative personality is strong enough to surmount any production limitations. All the Arnold hallmarks are present: masks, mirrors, reflective objects, baubles, beads, and so on; among the cast is Beat poet Ruth Weiss who also appears in <em>Luminous Procuress<\/em>. I compared Arnold&#8217;s feature to <em>Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome<\/em>, and it&#8217;s Kenneth Anger&#8217;s Bacchanal that comes to mind again here. Where Anger scored his film with Jan\u00e1cek&#8217;s <em>Glagolitic Mass<\/em>, Arnold has an equally bombastic soundtrack that sounds like music from a sword-and-sandal epic. Arnold lacks Anger&#8217;s rigorous approach to montage but the general atmosphere is enough to make this seem like one of Anger&#8217;s lost films. Watch it <a href=\"https:\/\/rarefilmm.com\/2021\/08\/the-liberation-of-the-mannique-mechanique-1967\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lmm2-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/lmm2.jpg\" alt=\"lmm2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2022\/06\/13\/luminous-procuress\/\">Luminous Procuress<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2021\/03\/17\/juliet-of-the-spirits\/\">Juliet of the Spirits<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/08\/10\/inauguration-of-the-pleasure-dome-the-eldorado-edition\/\">Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome: The Eldorado Edition<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2011\/12\/02\/flamboyant-excess-the-art-of-steven-arnold\/\">Flamboyant excess: the art of Steven Arnold<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2010\/12\/14\/the-tale-of-giulietta\/\">The Tale of Giulietta<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Arnold&#8217;s first film is a 14-minute fantasia made four years before his debut feature, Luminous Procuress (1971). Like many underground films, The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique is essentially a home movie in which the director&#8217;s friends have been encouraged to perform for the camera, but Arnold&#8217;s creative personality is strong enough to surmount any &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2022\/07\/27\/the-liberation-of-mannique-mechanique\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[401,12368,3134],"class_list":["post-21887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-kenneth-anger","tag-ruth-weiss","tag-steven-arnold"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5H1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}