The Pleasure Garden by James Broughton has a poetic narrative rich with metaphors and symbolism. An artistically ambitious project, it was deservedly recognized at the Cannes Film Festival in 1954, where it was awarded the Prix du Film de Fantaisie Poétique.
The film certainly has a whimsical, dreamlike quality, and filmed amongst the ruins and beautiful gardens and terraces of the Crystal Palace in London, it is essentially a series of vignettes, during which various eccentric and overlapping characters strive to connect, often intimately, with someone or something, each expressing their desires, fears and frustrations through action, song and narration.
James Broughton, a San Franciscan Renaissance poet, playwright and filmmaker, worked almost exclusively in 16mm during his 40-year film career, and conceived The Pleasure Garden as a “mid-summer afternoon daydream”. Find out more in IMDb.