The most oneiric of all his works and my favorite at all, shooted at Villa D’Este, near Rome, when he planned to make a film about the sixteenth century Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este. This was supposedly going to be only the first of four scenes, but the others were not made. While Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons plays, a Baroque lady flits in and out of Villa d’Este’s fountain until she melts into the waters. Anger said “Hide and seek in a night-time labyrinth of levels, cascades, balusrades, grottoes, and ever-gushing leaping fountains, until the water witch and the fountain become one.” The film was shot in black & white and printed through a blue filter and the Lady’s “Fan of Exorcism” was hand-tinted by Anger.
