meshes of the afternoon

Illustrations:

Charlotte Hopson- 4100231

Art of the Moving Image: Critical Commentary

Maya Deren, Meshes of the Afternoon [1943]

Extract: 04.16- 06.58

Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S03Aw5HULU

During the 1940s, film can be seen to reflect the volatility of the prevailing wartime period. Expressing elemental fear and anxiety of a society imbued with the threat of conflict; the film noir melodrama of Hollywood mainstream cinema, and the psychodrama of experimental film practises of the emerging American Avant-Garde, can be seen to pictorially engage with these tensions. Yet despite their cinematographic similarities, many differences exist. The experimental filmmakers of the psychodrama, were beginning to use film exclusively as an art form, to reflect personal vision; rejecting the industrial mode of film production and conventions of mainstream cinema, in favour of independent, film- based artistic practises. In order to discuss key themes of the psychodrama, this critical commentary focuses on Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by American migrs, Maya Deren and husband, Alexander Hammid. Particular attention is drawn to a short extract of the film to explore the unusual features of the mise- en- scene, such as the disjointed domestic setting and hypersignification of domestic objects; and to analyse the cinematography and techniques of montage editing.

The psychodrama, modelled on dream, lyric and contemporary dance; typically subverted conventional narrative and spatiotemporal qualities of commercial film, to explore themes such as desire, loss, obsession and death. The pseudo- narrative shaped by the depiction of dream or a dream- state, typically focused on the inner conflicts of consciousness and states of mind of the central protagonist. As suggested by Freud, The threshold between life and death becomes a space of uncertainty in which boundaries blur between rational and the supernatural, the animate and the inanimate. This threshold between life and death- the subconscious, often depicted as dream; as a key feature of the psychodrama, exposes the notion of indeterminate reality, whereby disparate objects often take on symbolic and metonymic resonance. This is especially prevalent in Meshes of the Afternoon. (1943) Typical of the psychodrama, Meshes draws from a strongly subjective narrative fiction; traversing the boundary between reality and unreality, animate and the inanimate, to expose personal, inner- conflict or crisis of the central protagonist, a woman, played by Deren. Focusing upon a single guiding consciousness, as reflected in the use of eyeline- matching shots, and participatory camera movements, the viewer enters the insular reality of the woman caught in a perpetual cycle of her own actions. The viewer is presented with a repeated sequence of a scene; which reworks an initial vision of a woman chasing and never catching, a cloaked figure; the woman then enters a domestic setting, encountering a series of domestic objects around her home. As Pruitt suggests,

[the] progressive continuity comprised of repetitions of symbolic eventscan be superimposed, one on another, to provide, in effect, variations of a single narrative moment or dilemma.

With every repeated cycle of this event, the narrative develops and accentuates the uncanny feeling of a foreboding, lingering presence. This presence is not only resonant of the unexplained cloaked figure, but is suggested by the placement and treatment of inanimate, domestic objects, which appear to take on their own malevolent vitality. Maureen Turim associates the films images with domestic disorder- a telephone off the hook, a record player turntable spinning relentlessly, a knife stuck in a loaf of bread; but this seems too literal. An abandoned newspaper, the empty chair, a key, the knife, each emanates an intangible, sinister quality, which disturb the scene of domesticity further than disorder. These elements appear to conspire to disrupt the protagonists intentions, and have been recognised as:

.. a distinctly feminine form of psychosis, whereby melodramatic conventions .. metamorphose into lethal weapons or objects or disgust domestic bliss thus turns into horrible nightmares.with insanity the assumed or intended cause. The domestic objects take on a metaphorical and symbolic value, and appear to embody a larger mysterious force; yet this is largely owing to the editing and cinematographic techniques of framing, isolations, seen in Figure 1, and cross cutting, to transform tranquil images of domesticity into threatening portents of destruction. Yet the domestic setting in itself plays a part in this threatening atmosphere and sense of impending violence.

Similar to the mainstream melodrama, the suburban home in the psychodrama is seen as oppressive, and Schatz has argued that this setting is used to signify..containment. Meshes, is largely ichnographically fixed by the claustrophobic atmosphere of the bourgeois home, which could suggest a feeling of entrapment physically, but could also represent entrapment within the narrative and within the mind of the central protagonist, (See Figure 2.) The uncanny use of this environment creates alienation and disorientation, as familiar territory becomes unsettlingly unfamiliar, thus indicating a visual and metaphorical depiction of the womans mental disintegration. Julian Wolfreys writes:It is a domestic world of dream logic where objects turn into other objects, where speed of motions does not correspond to physical laws, and where geography is neither constant nor consistent. Time and space are so fractured that such everyday occurrence as walking up the stairs, entering a bedroom, or answering the telephone become traumatising experiences.

This is illustrated in Figure 3, 4 and 5, whereby the mundane task of walking up the stairs is exaggerated and made unfamiliar. A combination of cuts, cut- in shots and framing techniques, alongside the use of slow motion; labours the protagonists movements, making the action, an event. By extending the temporal duration into one of abnormality, what should be an insignificant moment becomes a crucial part of the narrative, and creates a sense of tension and suspense. This twenty- two second sequence, exaggerates the dynamism of movement, and simultaneously illuminates the dialectical tensions between reality and unreality, crucial to the narrative of the psychodrama, and reminds the viewer of the spectacle of film as a medium. The dialogue between reality and unreality is again reflected in Figure 5 and 6; a scene in which the unique privilege of the camera subverts actual possibility. The juxtaposition of montage sequences, interruptive jump-cuts and disorientating camera positions, combined with the uncanny domestic setting; creates a sense of hysteria and latent menace and changes, what should be understood as a banal journey of a woman navigating her home, into a narrative infused with imminent threat and impending violence.

The film cameras material potential to create a [p]rojected image as a mirror, a weapon, an analytical tool, and a mise en abyme in which the virtual and the real unfold into one another with increasing complexity. As Rush explains, the originating tactics of the technology of photography, to represent motion and duration is particularly suited to express extraordinary psychological states. This observation suggests that the medium of film and its ability to be manipulated, both in methods of editing and cinematographic strategies, enabled Deren to fuse the virtual and the real, to represent the extraordinary psychological state.

Therefore, the unique material potential of film combined with subjective pictorial camera work, and the carefully composed mise- en- scene, enabled inanimate objects to appear malevolent; the domestic setting, uncanny and claustrophobic; and revealed the ambiguity of reality. Meshes may have reflected deterioration of the protagonists mind, but as a psychodrama, perhaps resonates with the undulating tension and distrust of society experiencing the madness of war. Illustrations:

Figure 1. 04.29: The isolation of the knife gives it a sinister vitality. It is the focal point of the shot, emphasising a sense of suspicion, infusing the narrative with tension and unsettling emotion. This could be described as a Macguffin.

Figure 2. 06.39: As Deren gazes out of the window onto the scene of her multiplied self chasing the cloaked figure, the viewer is at once reminded of the interior claustrophobic setting of the domestic environment and of the interior conflict of the protagonists mind.

Figure 3. 04.37: This close up, frames the feet making them the main focus for the viewer. The camera remains static as the feet slowly move out of shot. Within this frame, its can still be understood as a staircase, although having omitted the entire scale, enhances the feeling of endlessness which is projected by the use of slow motion.

Figure 4. 04.42: The scene continues to follow the protagonist running up the stairs, however from a close up, it has moved into an extreme close up, whereby the focus has become increasingly abstract and the movement more unsettling and unusual. The staircase has become an ambiguous, infinite object rather than a recognisable domestic feature. The only thing which makes it clear that it is in fact a staircase is the repetition of the cropped feet bounding laboriously, and the continuity of the editing.

Figure 5. 04.53: The awkwardly placed, downward shot elongates the staircase in which the protagonist has just ascended. By cropping out the bottom of the staircase, again exaggerates the idea of endless steps. The frame is diagonally cut in half by what appears to be the banister, which jarringly confronts the viewer, and metaphorically breaks the previous sequence with the one that proceeds it.

Figure 6. 05.01: At first Deren is shown to be behind the curtain as it finally completing her endless journey of scenes previously.

Figure 6. 05.04: However, a cut is employed at this point so that there is no continuity- we do not see Deren emerge from behind the curtain, instead she is simple placed in front by way of a jump cut. This severs real-time duration, calling into question spatiotemporal qualities of film. It makes the viewer aware of the presence of discontinuity in both the narrative throughout and the unique material potential of the photographic medium.Art of the Moving Image: Critical Commentary

BibliographyButler, Alison; Women's cinema: the contested screen, Wallflower Press, 2002

Butler, Cornelia, Esther Adler, Alexandra Schwartz, Paola (CON) Antonelli, Carol (INT) Armstrong; Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, 2010Comer, Stuart; Film and Video Art, Tate Publishing, London, 2009Eagan, Daniel, National Film Preservation Board (U.S.); America's film legacy: the authoritative guide to the landmark movies in the ... landmark movies in the National Film Registry, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010Gibbs, John; Mise- en- Scene: Film Style and Interpretation, Wallflower, London and New York, 2002

Hurd, Mary G.; Women directors and their films, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007Lebeau, Vicky; Psychoanalysis and cinema: the play of shadows Psychoanalysis and cinema: the play of shadows, Wallflower Press, 2001

Le Grice, Malcolm; Experimental cinema in the digital age: BFI Classics, BFI Publishing, 2001

Lord, Susan and Annette Burfoot; Killing women: the visual culture of gender and violence; Volume 6 of Cultural studies series, Wilfrid Laurier Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006Margulies, Ivone; Rites of realism: essays on corporeal cinema; Duke University Press, 2003Mayne, Judith; The woman at the keyhole: feminism and women's cinema, Indiana University Press, 1990Mulvey, Laura; Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image, Reaktion Books, Cromwell Press Group, 2006Nichols, Bill and Maya Deren; Maya Deren and the American avant-garde, University of California Press Ltd, London 2001Perry, Ted; Masterpieces of modernist cinema, Indiana University Press, 2006

Pramaggiore, Maria and Tom Wallis; Film: a critical introduction, Laurence King Publishing, 2005

Rabinovitz, Lauren, Points of resistance: women, power & politics in the New York Avant-garde ...Maya Deren and an American Avant- Garde Cinema: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943- 1971) as Womans Discourse, University of Illinois Press, 2003Rees, A. L.; A History of Experimental Film and Video: From the Canonical Avant- Garde to Contemporary British Practice, BFI book, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010Rich, Ruby B.; Chick flicks: theories and memories of the feminist film movement, Duke University Press, 1998Rush, Michael; New Medias in Art, Thames and Hudson: world of art, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 2005

Rush, Michael; Video Art, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 2007Schatz, Thomas; Boom and bust: American cinema in the 1940s; Volume 6 of the History of American cinema, University of California Press, 1999Sitney, Adams P.; Visionary film: the American avant-garde, 1943-2000, Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 2002

Wheeler W. Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Experimental cinema: the film reader, In focus-Routledge film readers: In focus, Routledge, 2002 For the purpose of this commentary, Meshes, has been taken in its original silent format. A soundtrack by Derens third husband Tijei Ito, was later added to Meshes of the Afternoon, in 1959 and can be found on most examples of the film online.

Rees, A. L.; A History of Experimental Film and Video: From the Canonical Avant- Garde to Contemporary British Practice, BFI book, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p 57

Psychodrama, is a term used by A.L. Rees, but also sited much earlier by Sitney in Visionary Film; also known as trance film, due to the trance-like, hypnotic aesthetic and rhythmic effect that these films projected.

Both types of films manifested an undulating unease and paranoia; by featuring heightened cinematic styles, starkly contrasted aesthetics and harsh lighting, yet created visually dark, sinister atmospheres. However, the commercial interests, big budgets, well- known actors, and Hollywood sets of the noir pictures, did not apply to the psychodrama.


Sitney, Adams P.; Visionary film: the American avant-garde, 1943-2000, Oxford University Press Inc. New York, 2002

This is considered to be one of the first examples of the psychodrama, and was a dynamic collaboration between critic, activist and filmmaker, Deren and her filmmaker husband, Hammid, both of whom shot, acted, and edited the film in their bungalow in the LA hills. [Rees: 2010, 58] The film was the first of only a small portfolio of work for the tragically short-lived Deren, who died in 1961 aged just forty- four; and was a radical departure from the usual film that Hammid was used to producing- [Comer: 2009, 48]. Hammid was a Czechoslovakian refugee, and a filmmaker working on documentaries in Hollywood. Hammid had great photographic technical ability and skill, due to his background in documentaries in Hollywood, and was exposed to early avant-garde cinema. For more information on Alexander Hammid see- Thomas E. Valasek, Alexander Hammid: A Survey of His Filmmaking Career, Film Culture 67- 69 (1979) p 250- 322.

Rabinovitz, Lauren; Points of resistance: woman, power & politics in the New York Avant- Garde.. Maya Deren and American Avant- Garde: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943- 1971) as Womens Discourse, University of Illinois Press, 2003, p 56



Mulvey, Laura; Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image, Reaktion Books, Cromwell Press Group, 2006, p 38

John Pruitt, Stan Brakhage and the Long Reach of Maya Derens Poetics of Film. in Steinhoff, Eirik (ed) Chicago Review: Stan Brakhage : Correspondences 47:4/ 48: 1, p 166-132


The subjective, fluid camera is more of a participant in the action rather than a neutral recording agent, this encourages the viewer to share the sight of the protagonist. Rees, A. L.; A History of Experimental Film and Video: From the Canonical Avant- Garde to Contemporary British Practice, BFI book, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p 58

Perry, Ted; Masterpieces of modernist cinema, Indiana University Press, 2006, p 138

By treatment, I mean to suggest the cinematographic and editing techniques employed by the filmmakers to depict the objects in order to suggest an alterior motive by their presense.

Schatz, Thomas; Boom and bust: American cinema in the 1940s; Volume 6 of the History of American cinema, University of California Press, 1999, p 453


Butler, Cornelia, Esther Adler, Alexandra Schwartz, Paola (CON) Antonelli, Carol (INT) Armstrong; Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, 2010, p 302

Lord, Susan and Annette Burfoot; Killing women: the visual culture of gender and violence; Volume 6 of Cultural studies series, Wilfrid Laurier Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006 p 243

Meshes, despite the absolute negation of Deren to the approach, can be seen to permeate Surrealist and Freudian elements. The objects can be recognised as maintaining distinct Freudian characteristics, yet Deren was adamant to oppose this. Butler, Alison; Women's cinema: the contested screen, Wallflower Press, 2002, p 96

Rich, Ruby B.; Chick flicks: theories and memories of the feminist film movement, Duke University Press, 1998, p 53

Pramaggiore, Maria and Tom Wallis; Film: a critical introduction, Laurence Kind Publishing, 2005, p 198

Lord, Susan and Annette Burfoot; Killing women: the visual culture of gender and violence; Volume 6 of Cultural studies series, Wilfrid Laurier Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006 p 243

, Susan and Annette Burfoot; Killing women: the visual culture of gender and violence; Volume 6 of Cultural studies series, Wilfrid Laurier Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006 p 184

Gledhill, C. (ed) (1987) Home is Where the Heart is, London BFI, , in Gibbs, John; Mise- en- Scene: Film Style and Interpretation, Wallflower, London and New York, 2002, p 67


Rabinovitz, Lauren; Points of resistance: woman, power & politics in the New York Avant- Garde.. Maya Deren and American Avant- Garde: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943- 1971) as Womens Discourse, University of Illinois Press, 2003, p 57

This is an idea of Derens as seen in the John Pruitt text- [Pruitt:47:4, 116] In her writings, Deren suggests that the camera has the capacity to represent a given reality in its own terms, so that it is accepted as a substitute proper for that realty.

A cut has been employed to create discontinuity between the shot of Deren appearing in front of the curtain, when initially she had been photographed as behind it. This editing strategy overcomes a physical impossibility, simultaneously undermining the surface realism of the medium and the narrative.

Butler, Alison; Women's cinema: the contested screen, Wallflower Press, 2002, p 68


- Rush, Michael, New Media in Art, Thames and Hudson world of art, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 2005, p 27

Meshes is said to have been created out of Derens impulse to portray the inner realities of an individual and to explore the ways in which the subconscious will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience. Butler, Cornelia, Esther Adler, Alexandra Schwartz, Paola (CON) Antonelli, Carol (INT) Armstrong; Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, 2010, p302 - 303

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