Meshes of the Afternoon
Encyclopedia
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943
) is a short experimental film
directed by wife and husband team, Maya Deren
and Alexander Hammid. The film's narrative is circular, and repeats a number of psychologically symbolic images, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper–like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean. Through creative editing, distinct camera angles, and slow motion, the surrealist film depicts a world in which it is more and more difficult to catch reality.
In 1990, Meshes of the Afternoon was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going into the registry in the second year of voting.
According to a 2010 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art
, the film cost only $275 to make.
Directors Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid portrayed the role of the woman and the man in the movie.
and Luis Buñuel
's Un Chien Andalou
(1929) and L'Age d'Or
(1930).
Deren and Hammid wrote, directed and performed in the film. Although Deren is usually credited as its principal artistic creator, filmmaker Stan Brakhage
, who knew the couple, has claimed in his book Film at Wit's End that Meshes was in fact largely Hammid's creation, and that their marriage began to suffer when Deren received more credit.
The original print had no score. However, a musical score influenced by classical Japanese music by Deren's third husband, Teiji Ito
, was added under Deren's supervision in 1959.
claimed that Meshes of the Afternoon was a commentary on film noir
.
"This film is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does not record an event which could be witnessed by other persons. Rather, it reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience." —Maya Deren on Meshes of the Afternoon, from DVD release Maya Deren: Experimental Films 1943–58.
to "inject a fresh note into experimental film production". (Jacobs 279) Further in his discussion of experimental cinema in postwar America, Jacobs says the film "attempted to show the way in which an apparently simple and casual occurrence develops subconsciously into a critical and emotional experience. A girl comes home one afternoon and falls asleep. In a dream she sees herself returning home, tortured by loneliness and frustration and impulsively committing suicide. The story has a double climax, in which it appears that the imagined, the dream, has become real.”(Jacobs 279)
Deren uses specific cinematic devices in this film to convey deeper meaning. In a particular scene, Deren is walking up a normal set of stairs, and each time she pushes against the wall, it triggers the camera to move in that direction, almost as if the camera is part of her body. As she pulls herself up the last stair, the top of the stairs leads her to a window in her bedroom, which completely breaks the expectations of the viewer. In doing so, Deren completely destroys normal sense of time and space. There is no longer a sense of what the space is that she is in, nor for how long she was there. Deren constantly asks the viewer to pay attention and remember certain things by repeating the same actions over and over again, with only very subtle changes. In Meshes of the Afternoon, repeated images are of the knife in the bread, the phone off the hook, the key, and the record player as Deren goes about performing the same actions. Deren uses familiar images to trigger memory.
A recognizable trait of Deren’s work is her use of the subjective and objective camera. For instance, shots in Meshes of the Afternoon cut from Deren looking at an object, to Deren’s point of view, looking at herself perform the same actions that she has been making throughout the film. This conveys the meaning of Deren's dual personality or ambivalent feelings towards the possibility of suicide.
It is Lewis Jacobs' view that, "the film is not completely successful, it skips from objectivity to subjectivity without transitions or preparation and is oftentimes confusing." (Jacobs279) An example of Jacobs' comment would be when Deren cuts to her point of view, which normally is an objective shot, but in this POV shot she is watching herself, which is subjective. The viewer cannot expect Deren’s POV shot to contain herself.
Jacobs’ critique that "the film is not completely successful, it skips from objectivity to subjectivity without transitions or preparation and is oftentimes confusing," represents one point of view. However others take the film's approach to be a direct representation on the character's thought patterns in a time of crisis: "Such a film should indeed endow the cinema with a wholly new dimension of subjective experience, permitting the audience to see a human being both as others see him and as he sees himself."(Brinton365)
retrospective (2010), it was suggested that the pieces of the mirror falling into the ocean waves set up At Land
(1944) as a direct sequel, while Deren's last scene in the latter film (running with her hands up with a chess piece in one of them) is then echoed by a scene in Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), with that character still running.
vehicle, Space Is the Place
and Janelle Monáe's
video for Tightrope
.
Su Friedrich
conceived her short film, Cool Hands, Warm Heart (1979) in direct homage to Meshes of the Afternoon, and used the flower and knife motifs similarly in that film.
The dreamlike (or nightmarish) atmosphere of Meshes has influenced many subsequent films, notably David Lynch
's Lost Highway (1997); Wendy Haslem of the University of Melbourne's Cinema Studies department wrote about the parallels:
Jim Emerson, the editor of rogerebert.com, has also noted the influence of Meshes within David Lynch
's film, Inland Empire
. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070125/REVIEWS/701250301
In 2010, the Museum of Modern Art opened an exhibit that dealt with Deren's influence on three experimental filmmakers: Barbara Hammer
, Su Friedrich, and Carolee Schneemann
as part of a year-long retrospective on representation of women at the MoMA.
Industrial metal
pioneers Godflesh
used a still from the film for the cover of their 1994 EP Merciless
.
1943 in film
The year 1943 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 3 - 1st missing persons telecast * February 20 - American film studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor films....
) is a short experimental film
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
directed by wife and husband team, Maya Deren
Maya Deren
Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s...
and Alexander Hammid. The film's narrative is circular, and repeats a number of psychologically symbolic images, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper–like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean. Through creative editing, distinct camera angles, and slow motion, the surrealist film depicts a world in which it is more and more difficult to catch reality.
In 1990, Meshes of the Afternoon was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", going into the registry in the second year of voting.
According to a 2010 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, the film cost only $275 to make.
Plot
A woman sees someone on the street as she is walking back to her home. She goes to her room and sleeps on a chair. As soon as she sleeps, she experiences a dream in which she repeatedly tries to chase a mysterious hooded figure with a mirror for a face but is unable to catch it. With each failure, she re-enters her house and sees numerous household objects including a key, a knife, a flower, a telephone and a phonograph. The woman follows the hooded figure to her bedroom where she sees the figure hide the knife under a pillow. Throughout the story, she sees multiple instances of herself, all bits of her dream that she has already experienced. The woman tries to kill her sleeping body with a knife but is awakened by a man. The man leads her to the bedroom and she realizes that everything she saw in the dream was actually happening. She notices that the man's posture is similar to that of the hooded figure when it hid the knife under the pillow. She attempts to injure him and fails. Towards the end, the man walks into the house and sees a broken mirror being dropped onto wet ground. He then sees the woman in the chair, who was previously sleeping, but is now dead.Directors Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid portrayed the role of the woman and the man in the movie.
Background and production
The film was the product of Deren's and Hammid's desire to create an avant garde personal film that dealt with devastating psychological problems, like the French surrealist films of the 1920s such as Salvador DalíSalvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
and Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
's Un Chien Andalou
Un chien andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months....
(1929) and L'Age d'Or
L'Âge d'Or
L'Âge d'or is a 1930 surrealist film directed by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel and written by him and Salvador Dalí.The film began as a second collaboration with Dalí, but, by the time the film went into production, Buñuel and Dalí had had a falling-out, and so Dalí actually had nothing to do with...
(1930).
Deren and Hammid wrote, directed and performed in the film. Although Deren is usually credited as its principal artistic creator, filmmaker Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage
James Stanley Brakhage , better known as Stan Brakhage, was an American non-narrative filmmaker who is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th century experimental film....
, who knew the couple, has claimed in his book Film at Wit's End that Meshes was in fact largely Hammid's creation, and that their marriage began to suffer when Deren received more credit.
The original print had no score. However, a musical score influenced by classical Japanese music by Deren's third husband, Teiji Ito
Teiji Ito
was a Japanese composer and performer. He is best known for his scores for the avant-garde films by Maya Deren.Ito was born in Tokyo, Japan into a theatrical family. His father, Yuji Itō, was a composer and costume designer, and his mother, Teiko Ono, was a dancer who worked in both traditional...
, was added under Deren's supervision in 1959.
Analysis
In the early 1970s, J. HobermanJ. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
claimed that Meshes of the Afternoon was a commentary on film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
.
"This film is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does not record an event which could be witnessed by other persons. Rather, it reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience." —Maya Deren on Meshes of the Afternoon, from DVD release Maya Deren: Experimental Films 1943–58.
Lewis Jacobs' discussion
Writing about Meshes of the Afternoon, Lewis Jacobs credits Maya Deren with being the first film maker since the end of the warWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
to "inject a fresh note into experimental film production". (Jacobs 279) Further in his discussion of experimental cinema in postwar America, Jacobs says the film "attempted to show the way in which an apparently simple and casual occurrence develops subconsciously into a critical and emotional experience. A girl comes home one afternoon and falls asleep. In a dream she sees herself returning home, tortured by loneliness and frustration and impulsively committing suicide. The story has a double climax, in which it appears that the imagined, the dream, has become real.”(Jacobs 279)
Deren uses specific cinematic devices in this film to convey deeper meaning. In a particular scene, Deren is walking up a normal set of stairs, and each time she pushes against the wall, it triggers the camera to move in that direction, almost as if the camera is part of her body. As she pulls herself up the last stair, the top of the stairs leads her to a window in her bedroom, which completely breaks the expectations of the viewer. In doing so, Deren completely destroys normal sense of time and space. There is no longer a sense of what the space is that she is in, nor for how long she was there. Deren constantly asks the viewer to pay attention and remember certain things by repeating the same actions over and over again, with only very subtle changes. In Meshes of the Afternoon, repeated images are of the knife in the bread, the phone off the hook, the key, and the record player as Deren goes about performing the same actions. Deren uses familiar images to trigger memory.
A recognizable trait of Deren’s work is her use of the subjective and objective camera. For instance, shots in Meshes of the Afternoon cut from Deren looking at an object, to Deren’s point of view, looking at herself perform the same actions that she has been making throughout the film. This conveys the meaning of Deren's dual personality or ambivalent feelings towards the possibility of suicide.
It is Lewis Jacobs' view that, "the film is not completely successful, it skips from objectivity to subjectivity without transitions or preparation and is oftentimes confusing." (Jacobs279) An example of Jacobs' comment would be when Deren cuts to her point of view, which normally is an objective shot, but in this POV shot she is watching herself, which is subjective. The viewer cannot expect Deren’s POV shot to contain herself.
Joseph Brinton's discussion
In Joseph Brinton’s essay called, "Subjective Camera or Subjective Audience," he states that,the symbolic picturization of man’s subconscious in Maya Deren’s experimental films suggest that the subjective camera can explore subtleties hitherto unimaginable as film content. As the new technique can clearly express almost any facet of everyday human experience, its development should presage a new type of psychological film in which the camera will reveal the human mind, not superficially, but honestly in terms of image and sound.(Brinton365 )
Jacobs’ critique that "the film is not completely successful, it skips from objectivity to subjectivity without transitions or preparation and is oftentimes confusing," represents one point of view. However others take the film's approach to be a direct representation on the character's thought patterns in a time of crisis: "Such a film should indeed endow the cinema with a wholly new dimension of subjective experience, permitting the audience to see a human being both as others see him and as he sees himself."(Brinton365)
Museum of Modern Art
In the Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
retrospective (2010), it was suggested that the pieces of the mirror falling into the ocean waves set up At Land
At Land
At Land is a 15-minute silent experimental film written, directed by, and starring Maya Deren. It has a dream-like narrative in which a woman, played by Deren, is washed up on a beach and goes on a strange journey encountering other people and other versions of herself...
(1944) as a direct sequel, while Deren's last scene in the latter film (running with her hands up with a chess piece in one of them) is then echoed by a scene in Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), with that character still running.
Influence
A cloaked, mirror-faced figure appears in John Coney's 1974 Sun RaSun Ra
Sun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...
vehicle, Space Is the Place
Space Is the Place
Space Is the Place is an 82-minute film made in 1972 and released in 1974.It was produced by Jim Newman, directed by John Coney, written by Sun Ra, Joshua Smith and features Sun Ra and his Arkestra...
and Janelle Monáe's
Janelle Monáe
Janelle Monáe is an American R&B/soul musician signed to Bad Boy Records and Atlantic Records.Monáe debuted with a conceptual EP, Metropolis: Suite I ...
video for Tightrope
Tightrope (Janelle Monáe song)
"Tightrope" is a 2010 song by American singer Janelle Monáe.It is the first official single from The ArchAndroid . The single premiered on February 11 on Pitchfork Media website, earning an immediate 9/10 rating and their coveted "Best New Music" tag with the companion song entitled "Cold War"...
.
Su Friedrich
Su Friedrich
Su Friedrich is an American avant-garde filmmaker.- Biography :Friedrich graduated from Oberlin College in 1975 and made her first film, Hot Water, in 1978...
conceived her short film, Cool Hands, Warm Heart (1979) in direct homage to Meshes of the Afternoon, and used the flower and knife motifs similarly in that film.
The dreamlike (or nightmarish) atmosphere of Meshes has influenced many subsequent films, notably David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
's Lost Highway (1997); Wendy Haslem of the University of Melbourne's Cinema Studies department wrote about the parallels:
- Maya Deren was a key figure in the development of the New American Cinema. Her influence extends to contemporary filmmakers like David LynchDavid LynchDavid Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
, whose film Lost Highway (1997) pays homage to Meshes of the Afternoon in his experimentation with narration. Lynch adopts a similar spiraling narrative pattern, sets his film within an analogous location and establishes a mood of dread and paranoia, the result of constant surveillance. Both films focus on the nightmare as it is expressed in the elusive doubling of characters and in the incorporation of the “psychogenic fugue,” the evacuation and replacement of identities, something that was also central to the voodoo ritual. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/deren-2/
Jim Emerson, the editor of rogerebert.com, has also noted the influence of Meshes within David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
's film, Inland Empire
Inland Empire (film)
Inland Empire, sometimes styled as INLAND EMPIRE, is a 2006 mystery film written and directed by David Lynch. It was his first feature-length film since 2001's Mulholland Drive, and shares many similarities with that film. It premiered in Italy at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2006...
. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070125/REVIEWS/701250301
In 2010, the Museum of Modern Art opened an exhibit that dealt with Deren's influence on three experimental filmmakers: Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer is an American filmmaker in the genre of experimental films and a professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.-Biography:...
, Su Friedrich, and Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the...
as part of a year-long retrospective on representation of women at the MoMA.
Industrial metal
Industrial metal
Industrial metal is a musical genre that draws from industrial music and many different types of heavy metal, using repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Founding industrial metal acts include Ministry, Godflesh, and KMFDM.Industrial metal's...
pioneers Godflesh
Godflesh
Godflesh are an English industrial metal band from Birmingham, England. Originally known as Fall of Because, they formed in 1988 by Justin K. Broadrick and G.C. Green and disbanded in 2002. Godflesh's innovative music is widely regarded as a foundational influence on industrial metal and post-metal...
used a still from the film for the cover of their 1994 EP Merciless
Merciless (EP)
Merciless is an EP released by industrial band Godflesh in 1994 on Earache/Columbia.The EP was re-released along with the Selfless album on one disc on Earache as the compilation "Selfless/Merciless", in 1996....
.